Mike Brown's Planets: Orcus Porcus. No, that’s not going to be the name for the satellite of Orcus. But it was suggested a surprising number of times, and it did make me laugh every time I read it. When I decided, on a whim, to throw open the naming of the moon of Orcus, I thought I’d get a few suggestions here and there and make a quick decision. More than 1000 suggestions later I’m a bit overwhelmed and thoroughly torn. There were good names, silly names, scholarly names, names of people’s pets and wives and girlfriends (never husbands or boyfriends, though, which is interesting). Names came from came – not surprisingly – from Etruscan mythology, but also Norse, Aztec, Greek, Hindu, and many more. There were references to current media in all forms, there was word play, and there were made up names that simply sounded good (or at least someone thought they sounded good).
After sorting through all of the suggestions, as few interesting names/themes stand out. Disney-related. Dungeons and Dragons related. Tokien related. Near-Infrared Surface Properties of the Two Intrinsically Brightest Minor Planets: (90377) Sedna and (90482) Orcus - Abstract - The Astrophysical Journal. The Size, Density, and Formation of the Orcus-Vanth System in the Kuiper Belt. Orcus for astrologers. The discovery and naming of Orcus in 2004 brings to astrology a second planet representing the Roman god of the underworld, and an enigma as difficult to discern as the underworld itself. The February, 2004, discovery of Orcus, then known as 2004DW, was quickly overshadowed the next month by the dramatic announcement of the discovery of Sedna, and astrologers, myself included, quickly scrambled to get up to speed with Sedna, leaving 2004DW (Orcus) aside until it had a name.
Like the true god of the underworld he is, Orcus lurked in the background, giving few clues to his real nature while we were preoccupied with other things. By early 2005, when we turned to look at Orcus, the superficial part of this new planet was clear enough. He was discovered by the same astronomers who had discovered Quaoar and Sedna, no surprise there. The planet's name, however, belied the mystery which anything from the underworld contains. It was easy enough to see how Orcus was named. Pluto & Orcus: The Astronomy and Astrology. A new & extensive exploration into the nature of Pluto and Orcus, Pluto's Compliment Posted June 2, 2009 Nick Anthony Fiorenza Copyright © 2009 Nick Anthony Fiorenza, All Rights Reserved Introduction to Pluto & Orcus; their Orbital Rationship, and their Moons Pluto, discovered by Clyde Tombaugh of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff Arizona on Feb 18, 1930, is now recognized to be one of many Kuiper belt objects and was reclassified on Aug 24, 2006 into the new "dwarf planet" classification.
Astronomers are now finding several of these objects in the Kuiper belt to be similar to the size of Pluto; and one that is quite complimentary to Pluto is Orcus. Orcus was discovered on Feb 19, 2004 by Mike Brown, a professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology, and colleagues Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz. Identifying the nature of our newly discovered planets is of poignant significance regarding Pluto's "assumed" astrological role. The Orbits of Pluto & Orcus.