The History Behind the name Morhéa!

The story behind the naming of Morhéa starts on July 27, 2002. Many of you were there with us on that beautiful night at the Chief Hosa Lodge! A wonderful wedding spot just up the hill a ways from our house. Chief Hosa has a wonderful view of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. One of the first great views on your way out of Denver. After Kim and I got married we took a Windstar Cruise around the Tahitian Islands. First off, if you are an adult you can and should enjoy this cruise. Unfortunately, they don’t allow kids on the cruises. I think they had around 100 rooms on board, or was it 100 people? Either way it was small for a cruise ship. By the second night the entire staff had memorized our names. It was very impressive. Anyway, we got to see many of the islands around the area being on a large sail boat. On of those islands was named Moorea.

This was our favorite island ever. The island of Moorea can be seen in the background of the photo above. It is still probably the #1 place I have been. It is right up there with Hawaii and any of the Caribbean. A beautiful island with nothing much to do. They don’t have an advanced plumbing system there so every house is built at sea level. No houses on the sides of the hill! The way it should be. Kim and I got our black pearls there as well. A beautiful place for sure.

Jump forward a few years and it is just before April 24, 2005. We decided that Moorea was one of our favorite islands and it had so much history in our lives. So we thought, okay Moorea it is. Side note - My buddy Rob mentioned that the Tahitians probably pronoun it more like mo-o-rea. First thing Kim’s says is that if we name her that she will be called Moo for the rest of her life. We didn’t like that too much so we decided to play around with the words. When we were there the Moo sounded like a slightly long Mo or short Moo. So to us that was the starting point. A little different but Mo would start it off. At the time I had also just started working on the Cassini VIMS project set to reach Saturn. One of the things we mainly study there is the surface composition of the moons of Saturn. One of the moons is named Rhea.

The two images above are taken from NASA and shows Rhea. The first one shows it with the rings just above. The second image shows a false color image used to bring out differences in composition on the moons surface.

The above images were taken of Saturn. The top one was taken when the moon was behind the planet and transmitting light through the rings and around saturn. The second image shows how the VIMS team sees Saturn. If you can penetrate the top layer of clouds a little you get a better view of the very dynamic atmosphere/surface.

The moon got its name from the Greek goddess Rhea. She was the Titaness daughter of Uranus, the sky, and Gaia, the earth, in classical Greek mythology. In earlier traditions, she was strongly associated with Gaia and Cybele, the Great Goddess and later seen by the classical Greeks as the mother of the major gods and goddesses. Sister to Cronus and mother to Demeter, Hades, Hera, Hestia, Poseidon and Zeus.

Now if you were to type Rhea into the internet you get different pronunciations. In the planetary community we usually say it like we say Rhéa. Other people pronounce Rhea as you would the ia in Maria. That confused us more so we made it a little harder and added an accent aigu (é) to Rhea giving us Rhéa. Now we add the Mo back and get Morhéa. With the hopes that she becomes Morhéa or Rhéa. She is born on April 24, 2005 as Morhéa Sophie Hoefen. Sophie after a beautiful sister of Kim and Steph's who died at a very young age from SIDS.

Now we keep wanting to go back and show her the island she was named after but I think we might wait a little longer until she can remember it.

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