Moon
In 2005, the adaptive optics team at the Keck telescopes in Hawaii carried out observations of the four brightest TNOs (Pluto, Makemake, Haumea, and Eris), using the newly commissioned laser guide star adaptive optics system. Images taken on September 10 revealed a moon in orbit around Eris. In keeping with the "Xena" nickname already in use for Eris, Brown's team nicknamed the moon "Gabrielle", after the television warrior princess's sidekick. When Eris received its official name from the IAU, the moon received the name Dysnomia, after the Greek goddess of lawlessness who was Eris's daughter. Brown says he picked it for similarity to his wife's name, Diane. The name also retains an oblique reference to Eris's old informal name Xena, portrayed on TV by Lucy Lawless.
Read more about this topic: Eris (dwarf Planet)
Famous quotes containing the word moon:
“The faery beam upon you,
The stars to glisten on you,
A moon of light
In the noon of night
Till the firedrake hath o’er gone you.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“It becomes the moralist, too, to inquire what man might do to improve and beautify the system; what to make the stars shine more brightly, the sun more cheery and joyous, the moon more placid and content.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There are two kinds of adventurers: those who go truly hoping to find adventure and those who go secretly hoping they won’t.”
—William Least Heat Moon [William Trogdon] (b. 1939)