From: andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk   
      
   On 2005-05-08, Matalog  wrote:   
   > Does anybody know the name of the mars-sized planet that supposedly hit the   
   > earth and created the moon was called?  I was watching Natural World just   
   > now and it said the name of the planet - it began with V or F i think.   
      
   I've heard "Theia" and "Orpheus" used, although as I understand it   
   there's no "official" name. Theia is more common, I believe, and is also   
   mythologically elegant - she was a minor goddess who gave birth, among   
   others, to Selene...   
      
   Others, hmm. V or F? "Phaeton" is (or at least can be, it's not a word   
   anyone uses these days) pronounced with an F; it was hypothesised to   
   exist where the asteroid belt is now, between Mars and Jupiter.   
   (Fittingly, there is now an asteroid Phaethon..) I think some may now   
   apply the term to a hypothetical "destroyed planet" there, but I vaguely   
   recall a different name being used. These are all very unofficial,   
   though.   
      
   "Vulcan" was a hypothetical planet inside the orbit of Mercury; one or   
   two nineteenth-century observations were made, but these are now thought   
   to be mistakes; if it's there, we've singularly failed to notice it.   
      
   --   
   -Andrew Gray   
    andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)