At 10:20 PM Sunday 2/5/2006, Julia Thompson wrote:
Robert G. Seeberger wrote:
"I keep on talking about my object as that thing we found or 2003
UB313, which is a horrible name," said Mike Brown, a Cal Tech
planetary scientist who discovered the object with colleagues Chad
Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory and David Rabinowitz of Yale University.
"It can't get an official name until it has an official status and
right now it doesn't have an official status, so it can't get a
name," he said.
So he's not going with the convention a number of other astromers
are using, referring to it as "Xena"?
He started using that as a preliminary name. He says he has a better
permanent name in mind to be revealed when the time comes. Hopefully
he is not going to follow the example of a SF story I read some years
back where the discoverer of several planets beyond Pluto named them
Mickey, Goofy, et. al. . . . (Dunno if the IAU would approve those
names, or, for that matter, if they would approve "Xena" as the
official name . . . )
--Ronn! :)
"Since I was a small boy, two states have been added to our country
and two words have been added to the pledge of Allegiance... UNDER
GOD. Wouldn't it be a pity if someone said that is a prayer and that
would be eliminated from schools too?"
-- Red Skelton
(Someone asked me to change my .sig quote back, so I did.)
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