Vulcan and Cerberus Receive Most Votes in Contest to Name Pluto Moons
The name Vulcan was nominated by William Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk in the original "Star Trek" series.
Pluto's most recently discovered moons could be named Vulcan and Cerberus — the two names that received the most votes in a contest that closed Monday, Feb. 25, 2013 — but there's no guarantee, an NBC News post says. The moons' discovery teams, led by Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in California, have naming rights for the two moons, and the team originally announced Monday, Feb. 11, that it had opened a contest for public voting on the names. Voters were asked to choose between 12 proposed names based on Greek and Roman mythology related to ancient tales about Hades and the Underworld, as Pluto, and its three previously-discovered moons — Charon, Nix and Hydra — have traditionally been named in this manner. But after William …
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