A trio of small moons in our solar system, which had been discovered a few years ago, will be officially named, with two of them taking on the ancient Greek mythological names of the daughters of the sea god Nereus, Nereids (sea nymphs), livescience.com reports.
The tiny celestial bodies, which had been assigned numerical designations, were recently confirmed by the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) Minor Planet Center — the organization responsible for naming new solar system objects such as moons, asteroids, and comets.
The two new satellites orbiting around the furthest planet from the Sun in our solar system, Neptune, which will be given the ancient Greek names, are around 23 km and 14 km wide.
The other moon, floating around Unranus will eventually be named after a character from the plays of William Shakespeare, joining the likes of previously discovered moons such as Titania, Oberon, and Puck.
The new moons were each spotted using ground-based telescopes, which is no mean feat considering their diminutive size and distance from our planet.
“The three newly discovered moons are the faintest ever found around these two ice giant planets using ground-based telescopes,” Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington D.C. who was involved in all three discoveries, said in a statement. “It took special image processing to reveal such faint objects.”
In Greek mythology, the Nereids were the daughters of Nereus and the Oceanid Doris. Nereus lived with them in the depths of the sea, particularly the Aegean. The Greek hero Heracles, in his quest for the golden apples of the Hesperides, obtained directions from Nereus by wrestling with him in his many forms. Nereus frequently appears in vase paintings as a dignified spectator.
