For 1000’s of years, Cardea has been often called the Roman goddess of doorways and transitions, a guardian of thresholds. On Monday, she joined the celestial ranks of fellow mythological figures like Mars, Venus and Andromeda.
However Cardea will not be a planet or a constellation. She is as a quasi-moon — a very-real kind of asteroid that seems to be doing a particular orbital dance round Earth.
The Worldwide Astronomical Union, the group of scientists charged with awarding official names to house objects, chosen Cardea by a naming contest that generated greater than 2,700 entries. The profitable identify was submitted by Clayton Chilcutt, 19, a sophomore from the College of Georgia, who participated within the contest as a part of an additional credit score project in an introductory astronomy class.
“I got here throughout Cardea, and once you learn the outline, it simply sounds celestial,” stated Mr. Chilcutt, an accounting and finance main, including that his “small contribution to science” was now a part of the historical past books.
However after additional analysis, Mr. Nasser, who has a Ph.D. within the historical past of science from Harvard, discovered that the fleck on the poster designated a moon was not technically a moon, but additionally not not a moon, as he describes it.
A planet orbits round a star, and a moon orbit round a planet. Quasi-moons orbit the solar however are shut sufficient to Earth to appear like tiny moons “doing this double Hula-Hoop dance out in house,” Mr. Nasser stated.
Mr. Nasser additionally discovered that Zoozve’s actual identify was not the pile of consonants however merely a misinterpretation from the poster’s artist: Zoozve was truly 2002-VE. Nonetheless, he satisfied the astronomical union, which often approves mythological names solely from tradition or literature, to provide 2002-VE the identify Zoozve.
“It was completely surprising and it felt like a bit coup, like a bit nudge for silliness within the universe,” Mr. Nasser stated.
However Zoozve was not alone. In reality, Earth had a handful of quasi-moons, too, that had been eligible to be named (just one had a non-alphanumeric designation, Kamo’oalewa).
“No person appeared to care!” Mr. Nasser stated. “We care, I care, lots of people would care.”
So in June, “Radiolab” and the astronomers union teamed as much as discover a mythological identify befitting of 2004 GU9, a quasi-moon that was found in 2004 by the LINEAR challenge in Socorro, N.M. The astronomical union stated certainly one of its closest approaches to Earth will probably be in October 2026, when it’s about 18.5 million miles from Earth.
The competition solicited names from greater than 100 totally different international locations. Many entrants wrote shifting tales of mythological origin tales, some from their very own cultures and others from oceans away, and what a reputation like this may imply to the world. The astronomer’s union weeded out duplicates, names already in use and “clearly not mythological names the place individuals didn’t even attempt,” Mr. Nasser stated, like Mooney McMoonface.
“Radiolab” helped assemble a star-studded panel of astronomers, journalists, lecturers, college students and even a couple of movie star nerds, together with Invoice Nye, Penn Badgley and Celia Rose Gooding. The panelists whittled the checklist right down to seven finalists — two of which got here from the identical College of Georgia course — after which launched the checklist to the general public.
Different finalists included Bakunawa, a legendary dragon from Philippine folklore, who was stated to rise from the ocean to swallow the moon; Ehaema, or “Mom Twilight” in Estonian folklore; and Tecciztecatl, an Aztec lunar god who as soon as aspired to be the solar.
“It actually brings individuals into the science who in any other case have been like, ‘Nah, that’s not for me,’” stated Kelly Blumenthal, the director of astronomy outreach for the worldwide group.
Ms. Blumenthal stated it might “be a disgrace” to let the opposite finalists go to waste, and that the union’s naming group will counsel they be used sooner or later.
For Mr. Nasser, Cardea, the profitable identify, was finally becoming for a quasi-moon: An historical doorkeeper and protector, a physique to be careful for us throughout a time of tumult and transition.
Mr. Nasser hoped the naming contest helped individuals really feel “really feel this connection to what’s greater than all of the chaos that’s taking place on the bottom proper now,” he stated. “House is the largest massive image we’ve.”
