While I like the mockery of “Buffy” (a show I enjoyed but thought was overrated), you’re wrong on two counts:

1.) There was already an object in space that was named after a “good show”

2.) If another planet, chunk of ice, or solar system was nicknamed “Brian” or “Stewie”, then that would just be an example of something getting their name from a crappy TV show .

But I guess it doesn’t really matter what these things are nicknamed, since they’ll probably end up getting different names anyway.

By the way, I like the idea of naming objects after porn stars. Get a lot more support from the “Joe Sixpacks” of the world if we announce we are sending a “probe” to Jenna Jameson and will send back pictures. They will start writing checks.

Granted, most either have too much speed (hyperbolic trajectories) or too little (they fall into the sun); and of the ones that achieve stable orbits, most are on parabolic trajectories. But surely we’d expect a few of them to achieve near-circular orbits that are significantly tipped from the eccliptic.

[Commentator Ektich, in an earlier reply, makes a really good point.]

Where is the big mystery — what am I missing here?

Maybe instead of questioning our basic assumptions we should act on the obvious probable solution (that “Buffy” is not from around here” and get a probe out there to analyze the materials she’s made of!