Alternate Discovery and Naming of Solar Planets and Other Celestial Bodies

[Ciclavex]

This is something I see occasionally see in alternate history, but not too often, and I put some thought into it for my own work, but I wondered what others might think.

The first “modern” celestial discovery was, of course, the moons of Jupiter by Galileo in the early 17th century, followed on by the moons of Saturn, and, as time went on, eventually Uranus, Neptune, and the various dwarf planets, like Ceres and Pluto, over the succeeding centuries. It’s weird how little you see of this; even for AH works dealing with post-1900 PoDs, Pluto, which we still sort of think of as a default, was discovered within living memory.

Related to this would be naming schemes; as some of you know, naming schemes were hardly fixed - it took nearly two centuries for Titan to receive its final name, for example, and the planets had divergent names in some cases - Uranus was famously called Georgium Sidis after King George III by its discoverer, Herschel.

So this thread is from discussion of both alternate times and places of discovery of worlds, as well as alternate names and naming schemes, for newly discovered planets, moons and so on in ATLs. Other historical options that didn’t catch on, or entirely new ideas are all welcome.

 

[Alex Richards]

The moons of Uranus were originally intended to be named after Spirits of the Air, before going for the plays the first few were named after, so that's one potential avenue.

 

[Ciclavex]

The moons of Uranus were originally intended to be named after Spirits of the Air, before going for the plays the first few were named after, so that's one potential avenue.

It would certainly make more sense as a naming scheme than the existing one. It feels more realistic than OTL, almost...

 

[napoleon IV]

An alternate name for Pluto was Minerva, however this was already the name of an asteroid which was discovered in 1867. If the asteroid gets a different name then maybe we end up calling Pluto Minerva (which would also mean that the US drops a minervium bomb over Nagasaki).

 

[Hendryk]

In the same vein, the main regions of the Moon were named by Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Riccioli, who came up with rather fanciful names. Had someone else beaten him to it, or had another Selenographic nomenclature prevailed, Apollo 11 wouldn't have landed in the Sea of Tranquillity.

 

[Archibald]

From memory, many wanted to called Uranus "Planet Herschell" but there was also an alternative "planet George VI" (or whatever George was king of England by 1781 - ninja'd, and got my George number wrong)

Neptune was nearly called "Le Verrier" and surely enough, the french astronomer had an ego the size of the said planet

Charon, the moon of Pluto, was named according to the beloved wife Sharon of the astronomer who discovered it in 1978 (the moon, not the wife !), and only later did he found the extraordinary coincidence - that Charon was Pluto best pal, in the Greek mythology and in hell altogether

My favorite deep space objects name ? Makemake (sounds like a duck) and of course, Oumuamua (which sounds like a children weeping and calling her mother, oh mummy, it works even better in French, oh maman !)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makemake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ʻOumuamua

 

[Uhura's Mazda]

The name Georgium Sidus for Uranus was, of course, used in Philip Reeve's steampunk Larklight books, which feature giant space spiders, steam trains on asteroids, and the Mumby family.

 

[Lemon flavoured]

Charon, the moon of Pluto, was named according to the beloved wife Sharon of the astronomer who discovered it in 1978 (the moon, not the wife !), and only later did he found the extraordinary coincidence - that Charon was Pluto best pal, in the Greek mythology and in hell altogether

I still think the best naming coincidence was 90 Antiope, which was named after one of two things, but with no agreement on which it should officially be. Of course it turned out to be a binary asteroid.

 

[Thande]

This is something that interests me a lot. Here are the ones I went with in LTTW:

OTL Uranus - discovered by Charles Messier in 1794. Initially called L'Étoile du Diamant (the Diamond Star, after the martyr of the Revolution); later called Messier by some and 'Planet Six' by the Lisieux regime. Eventually the name settled on Dionysus after considering Apollo, Uranus and Neptune.

OTL Titania and Oberon - Oenopion and Staphylus (the moons are named after Dionysus' children)

OTL Neptune - Ariadne, existence deduced by Yakov Struve and named 30 years before its existence was proved. So called because Ariadne was Dionysus' consort, and Struve's work talking about being able to detect it by its gravitational effect on Dionysus was mistranslated as 'love' in the French edition.

OTL asteroids are called 'sub-planets' and the ones between Mars and Jupiter are called Trojans and named after figures from the Trojan War (in OTL confusingly this term was used for a different set of objects). OTL Ceres is Agamemnon, OTL Pallas is Odysseus, OTL Juno is Hector and OTL Vesta is Achilles. Agamemnon, the first to be discovered, was done so by Arjen Roelofs in 1808.

 

[Ncw8]

The naming of the Trojan asteroids is interesting in itself. The leading Tojans are named after Greek heros and the lagging Trojans after the heros of Troy, except for Patroclus and Hektor which are swapped over. It's a strange co-incidence that there's one "spy" in each camp.

 

[Lemon flavoured]

I wonder if a TL where more asteroids are discovered earlier somehow, but Pluto still isnt discovered until more or less when it was in OTL might lead to less silliness about the definition of a planet.

 

[Ciclavex]

Part of the problem of planets is that it was a very Potter Stewart thing until the discovery of Eris forced the issue. Of course, the whole drama of Ceres in the 19th century - when they ultimately decided it and other objects were asteroids (which they had to create a definition) rather than planets - set the stage for the Pluto decision — can there really be any consistency to any system that rules Pluto a planet but Ceres an asteroid?

In Fashions Made Sacred, though the Asteroid Belt hasn’t yet come up in narrative, I’ve planned that they came up with a different solution to the Ceres situation, and Ceres, or, rather, Vesta is accounted the sixth planet - when they decided the ‘planetoids’ weren’t proper planets, the main one was kept and the “Vestan Circlet” of planetoids is considered to be a sort of pseudo-satellite system which Vesta has not ‘yet’ unified.

 

[Archibald]

The story of Pluto discovery is awesome. Just think about it, this way: Clyde Tombaugh discovered, not a planet, but the first KBO (Kuiper Belt Object) in 1930. The second object in this category (bar Charon, found in 1978) was found in... 1992. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15760_Albion
Tombaugh discovery was one hell of an achievement.

Why some people are so enraged about Pluto is completely beyond me. Common, this thing is not a planet. It never was; the orbit is wrong, the mass is wrong, the satellite is wrong. It was obvious to me since I first red about the solar system when I was a kid in the late 80's. So the 2006 decision never shocked me. The funny thing is that there might be a ninth planet in the end, as big as Mars or even Neptune. It just blow my mind. Well, there might be more than one - plenty of Mars size dark and cold planets lurking in the depth of the solar system.

 

[Archibald]

This is something that interests me a lot. Here are the ones I went with in LTTW:

OTL Uranus - discovered by Charles Messier in 1794. Initially called L'Étoile du Diamant (the Diamond Star, after the martyr of the Revolution); later called Messier by some and 'Planet Six' by the Lisieux regime. Eventually the name settled on Dionysus after considering Apollo, Uranus and Neptune.

OTL Titania and Oberon - Oenopion and Staphylus (the moons are named after Dionysus' children)

OTL Neptune - Ariadne, existence deduced by Yakov Struve and named 30 years before its existence was proved. So called because Ariadne was Dionysus' consort, and Struve's work talking about being able to detect it by its gravitational effect on Dionysus was mistranslated as 'love' in the French edition.

OTL asteroids are called 'sub-planets' and the ones between Mars and Jupiter are called Trojans and named after figures from the Trojan War (in OTL confusingly this term was used for a different set of objects). OTL Ceres is Agamemnon, OTL Pallas is Odysseus, OTL Juno is Hector and OTL Vesta is Achilles. Agamemnon, the first to be discovered, was done so by Arjen Roelofs in 1808.

Surely enough, I red once that Galilei actually saw Uranus around 1610, but did not identified it as a planet.

 

[Archibald]

Part of the problem of planets is that it was a very Potter Stewart thing until the discovery of Eris forced the issue. Of course, the whole drama of Ceres in the 19th century - when they ultimately decided it and other objects were asteroids (which they had to create a definition) rather than planets - set the stage for the Pluto decision — can there really be any consistency to any system that rules Pluto a planet but Ceres an asteroid?

In Fashions Made Sacred, though the Asteroid Belt hasn’t yet come up in narrative, I’ve planned that they came up with a different solution to the Ceres situation, and Ceres, or, rather, Vesta is accounted the sixth planet - when they decided the ‘planetoids’ weren’t proper planets, the main one was kept and the “Vestan Circlet” of planetoids is considered to be a sort of pseudo-satellite system which Vesta has not ‘yet’ unified.

not only Ceres but the first four asteroids (up to Vesta or beyond, can't remember) were considered as planets. Then when they found the fifth, and the sixth, in rapid succession, somebody rightly noted "there is something rotten there" and tadaaam, ASTEROIDS, here we come.

 

[Alex Richards]

not only Ceres but the first four asteroids (up to Vesta or beyond, can't remember) were considered as planets. Then when they found the fifth, and the sixth, in rapid succession, somebody rightly noted "there is something rotten there" and tadaaam, ASTEROIDS, here we come.

I'm sure I spotted something like a '11 planet system' ending at Uranus.

 

[zaffre]

As I’ve mentioned in the past, the fact that Ceres almost became a full-fledged planet in 2006 is shockingly underrepresented in 'lol of course you want to read about president gore' timelines.

 

[Miss Teri]

The story of Pluto discovery is awesome. Just think about it, this way: Clyde Tombaugh discovered, not a planet, but the first KBO (Kuiper Belt Object) in 1930. The second object in this category (bar Charon, found in 1978) was found in... 1992. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15760_Albion

That, and he did so whilst looking very carefully on a plate, seeing what little dot moved.

 

[Lemon flavoured]

As I’ve mentioned in the past, the fact that Ceres almost became a full-fledged planet in 2006 is shockingly underrepresented in 'lol of course you want to read about president gore' timelines.

Yeah, I'm actually kind of surprised that more people haven't done that in TLs.

 

[Redolegna]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makemake

I think it's fair to say a lot of us know about that one thanks to a dedicated physicist and then a chemist picking it up for the beginning of one of his stories.