Fay, C., Graham, L., et al.
International Astronomical Union has officially named the newly discovered moon of Neptune “Hippocamp,” an unusual move that left the door wide open for it to be nicknamed by the older, more popular moons.
Led by Triton (Neptune I), the largest moon and self proclaimed “Queen Bee” of the Neptune system, nicknaming began with “Hungry Hungry Hippocamp.” Scientists are still trying to determine how the moons knew the name of a board game popularized 4.7 billion kilometres away from Neptune.
Tearful assertions by Hippocamp that her name isn’t weird, it’s just Greek, and that in fact, she is actually quite small for a moon were rebuked by Nereid (Neptune II), who proclaimed “you’re so ugly, Voyager 2 didn’t even take your picture!”
Hippocamp was photographed by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989 but went unnoticed because of it’s low albedo. Armed with this information and confusing the term “albedo” (an object’s ability to reflect sunlight) with “libido” (a measure of sexual desire) the other moons started calling Hippocamp “Low Libido Loser.”
Neptune, for it’s part, shouted “don’t make me come out there” when it heard the moons bickering in its orbit.
“The depth of creativity and cruelty we’re seeing is truly awe inspiring,” said Mark Showalter, who discovered Hippocamp in 2013, “I just hope they don’t discover that ‘Hippocamp’ is named after a half-horse, half-fish creature. They’ll have a field day!”
At press time the popular moons were experimenting with variations of “Seahorse Ass Bitch.”
