12.1.09

That Planet - You Know Which One


Uranus is a fine example of a world, with interesting moons and mysterious, pitch black rings (the above image is false colour). It was, I'm sure you'll recall, discovered by the same fellow that discovered Enceladus - our favourite geologically active snowball. Dear William Herschel wanted to call it 'George III' after the man who was then king. The French, not too fond of how George III defeated Napoleon, called it simply, 'Herschel'.

All I really want to say is, if you can read this Planetary Society blog post on the pronunciation of Uranus without so much as chuckling, well, you're a much better person than me.

4 comments:

Geosomin said...

Nope I'm not.
Despite my best efforts I sniggered like a 6 year old...

Zhoen said...

As long as it's not Myanus.

Thing is, when I was a kid I would have sneered at the gigglers around me. These days, I join them.

dr. hypercube said...

Haven't they renamed it Urectum yet?

Anonymous said...

I'm definitely not a better person than you! Funny thing is, I don't remember any of us even noticing the pronunciation, back in the dark ages, when we were studying the names of the planets - or perhaps since corporal punishment was still allowed then, we were too terrified to snicker at our teachers!