Discovery
Deimos was discovered by Asaph Hall, Sr. at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C on August 12, 1877, at about 07:48 UTC (given in contemporary sources as "August 11 14:40" Washington mean time, using an astronomical convention of beginning a day at noon, so 12 hours must be added to get the actual local mean time). Hall also discovered Phobos on August 18, 1877, at about 09:14 GMT, after deliberately searching for Martian moons.
It is named after Deimos, a figure representing dread in Greek Mythology. The names, at first spelled Phobus and Deimus, were suggested by Henry Madan (1838–1901), Science Master of Eton, from Book XV of the Iliad, where Ares (the Roman god Mars) summons Dread (Deimos) and Fear (Phobos).
Read more about this topic: Deimos (moon)
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“Next to the striking of fire and the discovery of the wheel, the greatest triumph of what we call civilization was the domestication of the human male.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“We early arrive at the great discovery that there is one mind common to all individual men: that what is individual is less than what is universal ... that error, vice and disease have their seat in the superficial or individual nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)