Saturn's moons named after Inuit characters (fwd)

[Phil Cash Cash]

Saturn's moons named after Inuit characters
WebPosted Sep 2 2003 08:25 AM MDT
http://north.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=sep02inuitnamemoon02092003

IQALUIT, Nunavut - Four of 12 new moons discovered around Saturn in the
fall of 2000 have now officially been given Inuktitut names.

The decision was announced late last month at the Astronomical Union's
meeting in Sydney Australia.

Canadian J.J. Kavelaars was one of the three astronomers who discovered
the new moons.

He named one of them after Ijiraq, a mythological Inuit creature he had
read about in a children's book written by Michael Kusugak.

Kusugak says he read an article about Kavelaars and found out the
astronomer was looking for Inuit names for three more moons.

"Apparently this Canadian, J.J. Kavelaars reads my books to his children
and he wanted to name one of those moons 'Ijiraq' after a character in
one of my books," he says.

Two of the moons are named after the mythological characters Kiviuq and
Siarnaq, or Sedna.

A third is named after Paaliaq, a character Kusugak created for a novel
he is working on.

The newly-discovered satellites are about 50 km across and likely icy
moons; the remnants of asteroids or comets captured by the planet's
gravity long-ago. The satellites orbit Saturn at distances of around 15
million kilometers from the planet.

"These are chunks of material left over from the formation of the solar
system", says Kavelaars.