Discovery
Deimos was discovered by Asaph Hall, Sr. at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C on August 12, 1877, at about 07:48 UTC (given in contemporary sources as "August 11 14:40" Washington mean time, using an astronomical convention of beginning a day at noon, so 12 hours must be added to get the actual local mean time). Hall also discovered Phobos on August 18, 1877, at about 09:14 GMT, after deliberately searching for Martian moons.
It is named after Deimos, a figure representing dread in Greek Mythology. The names, at first spelled Phobus and Deimus, were suggested by Henry Madan (1838–1901), Science Master of Eton, from Book XV of the Iliad, where Ares (the Roman god Mars) summons Dread (Deimos) and Fear (Phobos).
Read more about this topic: Deimos (moon)
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“However backwards the world has been in former ages in the discovery of such points as GOD never meant us to know,—we have been more successful in our own days:Mthousands can trace out now the impressions of this divine intercourse in themselves, from the first moment they received it, and with such distinct intelligence of its progress and workings, as to require no evidence of its truth.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Next to the striking of fire and the discovery of the wheel, the greatest triumph of what we call civilization was the domestication of the human male.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)