If you wanted to use the closest Latin equivalent, you’d probably have to go with Caelus.

Where does the ‘C’ come from there?

Plus there’s already a constellation called Caelum which is pretty close to ‘Caelus’ see: http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/cae-t.html

Then again ‘Hydra’ is both the name of the largest constellation & the name of one of Pluto’s moons so I guess it could work. Or we could go for Chronos the Roman equivalent I think.

Actually, when it comes to Uranus I think the oldest name for it – the one that therefore should have priority – is 34 Tauri back when it was mistakenly charted as a star ..

As for Uranus vs Ouranos (which would I’m sure end up getting pronounced as “our anus” and thus not avoiding any tedious and juvenile humour at all), quite a lot of Greek words have come to the English language via Latin, this is expected. If you wanted to use the closest Latin equivalent, you’d probably have to go with Caelus.

I kind of wondered about that myself after reading it again. I thought, “”If Mars has been volcanically dead for millions of years, how could there be some type of reaction taking place today. I’m not sure geologic processes take place when volcanic rock reacts with water, though. (And, where is there that much water on Mars? I know it would have to be very deep under the surface.)

Thanks for the info!

Test. test. Why is my regular user name seemingly blocked? What did I do? Or something really weird is going on. Sometimes I see people refer to a post #, but the actual post is a couple numbers away.

My sympathies, I had something like that happen not so long ago to me so I know how frustrating it can be.* I hope it gets sorted out for you.

As for the post numbers, it seems they don’t take posts “awaiting moderation” into account and so
these come in “out of sequence” later & mess up the numbering. I don’t know if the BA can change the system so that “awaiting mods” posts come in with the number at which they appear or something like that? I’d love to see something like this done as it does create potential confusion when the numbering changes as it does now.

PS. Please BA can you write a blog post about the recent discovery of the “waterworld” super-Earth / gas dwarf GJ1214?

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* See http://www.bautforum.com/forum-introductions-feedback/94241-what-happens-when-ba-blog-comments-awaiting-moderation.html for my discussion of this issue assuming you can get onto the Bad Astronomy Universe Today (BAUT) forum. I don’t know if there’s anything there that will apply to your case or be helpful but I hope so.

The proper name for Uranus should really be Ouranos – the Greek spelling of the original greek god rather than the wrongly transliterated Roman spelling. I’m not the only one who thinks this either there’s even a facebook group (of which I’m a member but not the founding one) dedicated to this. See : http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=189939051777

As they put it on the home page there :

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“All the planets except one are named after Roman gods, and Ouranos is the one exception. Unfortunately it has become the brunt of joke after joke due to a Latinization of the original Greek name, Ouranos. We do not call Poseidon Posidon, so why make Ouranos the exception? Ouranos is a magnificent planet that has been subject to a bromidic and stale joke for far too long.”

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As for the sideways position of Ouranos being due to ejecting a large moon, all I can say is ejected *how*?

Interesting idea but a bit … um … Velikovskian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_in_Collision ) & you’d expect to see a bit more disruption of the Ouranousean satellite and ring systems wouldn’t you?

Is there any observational evidence for this idea or is it just hypothetical?

Also is it necessary to explain this or is it superflous? Don’t planetary axial tilts naturally vary unless they are stabilised by large moons such as is the case for Earth?