2023-07-26 19:47:00
In recent years we have witnessed a curious competition between Jupiter and Saturn to see which of the two is the planet with the largest number of satellites. In 2019 Saturn snatched the first place from Jupiter, accounting for a total of 83 moons. However, at the beginning of 2023, in different circulars of the Center for Minor Planets of the International Astronomical Union15 new moons of Jupiter were reported, which raised it back to the first position with 95 satellites.
Cassini image of Pan, Saturn’s moon that looks like a ravioli. In Greek mythology, Pan was the god of shepherds and flocks.
NASA, CC BY
But the joy of the gas giant has not lasted long. In May 2023, 63 new satellites officially joined the list of Saturn which, with 146 moons, undisputedly leads the planet. rankingcounting at the moment with more moons than the rest of the planets together.
We will see what will happen in the future, Scott Sheppardwho together with his team has discovered more than 70 of Jupiter’s moons, has already announced that they are on the hunt for new candidates and that they will soon have more than 100 known ones.
Europa, moon of Jupiter. The colors are natural. In Greek mythology, Europa is a Phoenician princess kidnapped by Zeus.
NASA/JPL/DLR, CC BY
Lovers and descendants of Zeus and Greco-Roman titans
These new satellites and many others previously discovered, as long as they are larger than one kilometer, are waiting to receive a name, according to the rules established by the Working Group for the Nomenclature of the Planetary System (WGPSN for its acronym in English).
In the case of Jupiter’s moons, they must be named after lovers and descendants of Zeus/Jupiter. For their part, Saturn’s moons will be named after the Greco-Roman titans, their descendants, or giants from Greco-Roman, Gallic, Norse, or Inuit mythology, depending on the characteristics of their orbit.
And meanwhile, we wonder why these objects, some of them tiny, end up getting a name while our Moon seems to have none.
To answer this question we must take a tour of the history of the names of celestial objects. If we go back to the first moments of civilization, we can assure, without fear of being mistaken, that the human being felt the need to question the nature of the stars that illuminate the darkness of the night and of the star that dominates the clarity with its light. of the day He immediately created a mythology around the most brilliant, which he identified as gods and, as such, gave them names.
The Luciferous Moon, bearer of light
In ancient Egypt the personification in the form of the Moon god was Iah, although Khonsu and Thoth were also lunar deities. In ancient Greece, the Moon was Selenewhich later was Moon for the Romans, adding the adjective lucifera or bearer of light. And it is that name, Luna with a capital letter, that we continue to use to refer to our satellite in those languages that come from Latin.
Thus, this apparent lack of a name would not be a cause for confusion if satellites had not been discovered around other planets that, due to similarity, we also call moons, but now with a lowercase letter.
The four illegitimate loves of Jupiter
It was in 1610 when Galileo Galilei y Simon Marius they observed four “stars” that moved around Jupiter: they were the first satellites discovered. Galileoin his work A starry Messenger_he called them Astros or Medicean Stars, in honor of the family of his former pupil, and later patron, Cosmo II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. He never referred to them as moons, or even as satellites, but sometimes as wandering stars and sometimes as planets.
For his part, Simon Mariuswho had a bitter dispute with Galileo over the priority of the discovery, in his work Jovial World_ (from 1614) proposes multiple names for these four new “planets”. After a long discussion about what they should be called, he suggests the names of Jupiter’s four illegitimate loves: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. In the end there was no consensus and it was agreed to name them Jupiter I, II, III and IV, according to their proximity to the planet.
Things changed a bit when Christiaan Huygens discovered in 1655 an object orbiting around Saturn which he referred to as Luna Saturni, by analogy to our satellite. From then on, the term moon began to be used as a synonym for the satellite of a planet.
Stunning false-color view of Saturn’s strange moon Hyperion. Differences in color could represent differences in the composition of surface materials. The image was obtained by the Cassini probe.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute, CC BY
When Uranus had the name of a king
The discovery of three new satellites around Saturn by Giovanni Cassini in 1672 and 1684 it did not result in the need to find a name for them, but rather these three new moons, together with the one previously discovered by Huygens, were renamed Saturn I, II, III and IV.
in 1781 William Herschel discovered a new planet which he named Star of George, in honor of King George III of England. This name was used until the early 19th century, when Johann Elert Bode suggested the name of Uranus, son of Saturn, as a more appropriate name and by which we now know him.
William Herschel he also discovered new satellites around Saturn, closer to the planet than those already known. To refer to them, and avoid having to change the Roman numerals of the previous ones, he suggested assigning the numeral according to the date of its discovery, something that began to be applied later, with the discovery of more moons orbiting around the giant planets.
But the possible trigger that gave the moons of other planets their own name was the discovery of Neptune in 1846, based on the calculations made by the French astronomer Urban Le Verrier. Here a great controversy arose because, independently, John Couch Adamsin England, had made similar calculations, and the British also claimed credit for the discovery.
Heaven free of patriotism
as it counts Stephen Casethe French mathematician The Glassmaker wrote to John Herschelson of William Herschel (and the most influential British astronomer of the day), suggesting that, in order to reconcile the British and French, the planet discovered by his father be named “Herschel” and the planet discovered by him “Le Verrier”.
This must have caused a real headache for John Herschel, who thought that heaven should be free of all nationalism or patriotism. Finally, the newly discovered planet was called Neptune but, as a result of that letter, John Herschel –he had never done so before– began to refer to Saturn’s satellites with mythological names, arguing that being the old nomenclature:
“…in practice troublesome, and a frequent source of errors and mistakes, I have used for my own convenience…a mythological nomenclature, which, however, I dare not recommend for the adoption of others, though I am convinced that some nomenclature other than the equivocal one in current use will be necessary for all who observe these bodies.
From this moment on, the use of mythological names to refer to the moons of Saturn is common, and the names proposed by Simon Marius for those of Jupiter are rescued. For the satellites of Uranus, the names of characters from Shakespeare’s works and from the poem by Alexander Pope were used The Rape of the Lock.
Saturn’s moon Enceladus in infrared. In Greek mythology one of the giants whose birth was the product of the blood of Uranus that was poured on Gaia.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CC BY
Thus, some confusion began to be created, as there were different denominations for the same object. With the creation in 1919 of the International Astronomical Union, rules were established for the correct naming of celestial objects. Since then, and although the designation of the satellites by their Roman numerals remains in force, each one of them has an official name by which it is known, and in the case of our satellite its name is Luna.
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