geekosystem

First the SETI Institute put it up for vote, then the geeks and nerds swarmed the Internet, and now it's as certain as it can be before the International Astronomical Union (IAU) makes the final call: The names of last two moons of Pluto have been chosen, courtesy of 450,324 votes and William Shatner. And the Plutonian award goes to....

Our old friend Pluto may still be sore about its demotion from a planet to an ice dwarf, but the good news is that we can name its moons. Two of them, anyway. Today, the SETI Institute has opened up the official naming to the public. Keep reading to learn what names are out to an early lead and how you can put your two cents in.

While the above picture may look like an asteroid as seen in an enormous cosmic mirror, it's not -- it's much, much cooler than that. This is the one of the latest images from NASA's Cassini probe, which shows two of Saturns "shepherd moons" -- Pandora and Prometheus, and we swear we're not making that up -- seemingly staring at one another down across the planet's rings.

Our own moon is something of a dead, crater-ridden boulder careening around the Earth, doing little of interest in the meantime. Sure, it's got some interesting features and it probably has more than a few secrets left to be uncovered, but nothing is really going on up there. Jupiter's moons, on the other hand, tend to be a little more active. Io, for example, has a vast sulfur landscape and hundreds upon hundreds of active volcanoes. Now, for the first time, we have a full geologic map of the moon's surface, indexing all of its harsh alien glory, including 425 volcanoes and not a single crater.

Since it arrived in orbit around Saturn after seven years of flying, the Cassini-Hyugens spacecraft has captured some truly incredible images of the ringed planet. The latest among them is this photo, which was taken on July 29 but released just a few days ago. It shows five of the planet's 62 moons and edge of Saturn's rings, arranged with astounding artistry. Since most people are not familiar with the satellites of Saturn, NASA has provided this helpful information:

Janus (179 kilometers, or 111 miles across) is on the far left. Pandora (81 kilometers, or 50 miles across) orbits between the A ring and the thin F ring near the middle of the image. Brightly reflective Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across) appears above the center of the image. Saturn's second largest moon, Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across), is bisected by the right edge of the image. The smaller moon Mimas (396 kilometers, or 246 miles across) can be seen beyond Rhea also on the right side of the image.

(NASA via Universe Today)