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Posted by <tapwater on September 15, 2006, 4:36 pm
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So it is named after Lucy Lawless (who played "Xena")?
> http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12893.html
>
> Caltech News Release
> For Immediate Release
> September 14, 2006
>
> The Dwarf Planet Formerly Known as Xena Has Officially Been Named
> Eris, IAU Announces
>
> PASADENA, Calif.--The International Astronomical Union (IAU) today
> announced that the dwarf planet known as Xena since its 2005
> discovery has been named Eris, after the Greek goddess of discord.
>
> Eris's moon will be known as Dysnomia, the demon goddess of
> lawlessness and the daughter of Eris.
>
> The names are those suggested by the discoverers of the dwarf
> planet--Mike Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at the
> California Institute of Technology, Chad Trujillo of the Gemini
> Observatory, and David Rabinowitz of Yale University, and by the
> discoverers of the moon--Brown and the engineering team of Keck
> Observatory where the observations were made.
>
> "Eris is the Greek goddess of discord and strife," explains Brown.
> "She stirs up jealousy and envy to cause fighting and anger among
> men. At the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, all the gods were invited
> with the exception of Eris, and, enraged at her exclusion, she
> spitefully caused a quarrel among the goddesses that led to the
> Trojan War.
>
> "She's quite a fun goddess, really," Brown adds. "And, for the Xena
> fans out there who are sad to see the name go, Eris appeared in her
> Latin version of Discordia as a recurring character on Xena: Warrior
> Princess."
>
> True to its name, the dwarf planet Eris has stirred up a great deal
> of trouble among the international astronomical community, most
> recently last month when the question of its proper designation led
> to a raucous meeting of the IAU in Prague. At the end of the
> conference, IAU members voted to demote Pluto to dwarf-planet status,
> leaving the solar system with eight planets.
>
> However, the ruling effectively settled the year-long controversy
> about whether Eris would rise to planetary status. Somewhat larger
> than Pluto, the body was formally announced to the world on July 29,
> 2005. With the August IAU ruling, Eris is the largest dwarf planet.
>
> Eris, about 2,400 kilometers in diameter, was discovered on January
> 8, 2005, at Palomar Observatory with the NASA-funded 48-inch Samuel
> Oschin Telescope. A Kuiper-belt object like Pluto, but slightly less
> reddish-yellow, Eris is currently visible in the constellation Cetus
> to anyone with a top-quality amateur telescope.
>
> Eris is now about 97 astronomical units from the sun (an astronomical
> unit is the distance between the sun and Earth), which means that it
> is some nine billion miles away at present. On a highly elliptical
> 560-year orbit, Eris sweeps in as close to the sun as 38 astronomical
> units. At present, however, it is nearly as far away as it ever gets.
>
> Pluto's own elliptical orbit takes it as far away as 50 astronomical
> units from the sun during its 250-year revolution. This means that
> Eris is sometimes much closer to Earth than Pluto--although never
> closer than Neptune.
>
> Dysnomia, the only satellite of Eris discovered so far, is about 250
> kilometers in diameter and reflects only about 1 percent of the
> sunlight that its parent reflects. The name is both a nod to Lucy
> Lawless, the actress who played Xena on the TV show, and to the
> astronomical tradition of naming the first satellites of dwarf
> planets.
>
> Based on spectral data, the researchers think Eris is covered with a
> layer of methane that has seeped from the interior and frozen on the
> surface. As in the case of Pluto, the methane has undergone chemical
> transformations, probably due to the faint solar radiation, causing
> the methane layer to redden. But the methane surface on Eris is
> somewhat more yellowish than the reddish-yellow surface of Pluto,
> perhaps because Eris is farther from the sun.
>
> Brown, Trujillo, and Rabinowitz first photographed Eris with the
> Samuel Oschin Telescope on October 31, 2003. However, the object was
> so far away that its motion was not detected until they reanalyzed
> the data in January of 2005.
>
> The search for new planets and other bodies in the Kuiper belt is
> funded by Caltech and NASA. For more information on the program, see
> the Samuel Oschin Telescope's website at
> http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomarnew/sot.html.
>
> For more information on Mike Brown's research, see
> http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown .
>
> To learn more about Eris, see
> http://www.planeteris.com .
>
> Contact: Robert Tindol
> (626) 395-3631
> tindol@caltech.edu
>
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