Talk:Elara (moon)

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Two conflicting pronunciations in English: ee'-lur-a would be expected from stress rules, and is the pronunciation used by the Random House and American Heritage dictionaries and the Columbia Encyclopedia. However, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology (JE Zimmerman, Harper & Row, 1964), the Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names (Bollard, ed.), and the Encyclopedia Mythica (online) have the seemingly irregular pronunciation ee-lair'-a. Zimmerman gives literary English pronunciations and doesn't try to recapture the Greek accent, so I'm taking both pronunciations to be valid. --kwami 02:08, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Actually, there is a slight chance that the Latin is Elāra, in which case the ee-lair'-a pronunciation would be regular. Since the Greek alphabet doesn't distinguish long from short a the way it does with mid vowels, this is a possibility. However, it's unlikely, as Attic ā regularly shifted to ō. kwami

Wow, this name isn't even in the full 9th edition of Liddell & Scott's Greek-English Lexicon. Given the unlikelihood of a long a in the Greek, your best bet might be ee'-lur-a. kwami 00:04, 2005 May 28 (UTC)

Posted this question on Talk:Ancient Greek phonology, and here's a summary of the response. 'Elara' is attested in,

Apollonios Rhodios, Ἀργοναυτικά 759ff:

Ἐν καὶ Ἀπόλλων Φοῖβος ὀιστεύων ἐτέτυκτο,

βούπαις, οὔ πω πολλός, ἑὴν ἐρύοντα καλύπτρης

μητέρα θαρσαλέως Τιτυὸν μέγαν, ὅν ῥ' ἔτεκέν γε

δῖ' Ἐλάρη, θρέψεν δὲ καὶ ἂψ ἐλοχεύσατο Γαῖα.

([[1]])

As this is a hexameter, the a would seem to be short, while accented. The δῖ Ἐ- shouldn't get contracted here, given that the iota is long; and contracting δῖ Ἐ- would be necessary for the a to be long.

The Greek form Ἐλάρη is literally Elarē. As would be expected in an epic poem, this is the Ionic (or Epic) form, corresponding to the Attic Ἐλάρα (Elara).

But stressed antipenults are normally short vowels in English, so the expected pronunciation would be el'-ur-a /'ɛlərə/ in English, which disagrees with all the dictionaries. kwami 19:07, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I can confirm that the analysis of Apollonius Rhodius is the only possible: δῖ’ Ἐλάρη (dî' Elárē) cannot be scanned as three long syllables, - - -, since it is not possible to have a synizesis that spans an elided vowel: δῖ(ε) Ἐλάρη (dî(e) Elárē). Using the TLG-CD-rom, I have found only two other examples of this name in a metric context, but in both cases the metre is uncertain (Simonides, fr. 560 P. Ἐλάρας γενεά and Pindar, fr. 294 S.-M.Ἀλέρας υἱόν). Enkyklios 16:08, 7 December 2005 (CET)

[edit] Picture of the moon

Before I add a picture that might have already been discussed somewhere, I thought I'd ask, is this a good representation of Elara? (I would think it's safe to trust the ESA, but since the picture isn't already up, I'm suspicious.) Ben Hocking ^{(talk|contribs)} 19:11, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

The only images of Elara are those from Earth-based telescopes where it appears like a star, or those from New Horizons where at most it might be a couple pixels across. I'm not sure where that picture came from, but I would have to say it's not an accurate representation of Elara. --Patteroast 14:20, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, it is credited to NASA. Perhaps Galileo snapped a picture of it while it was touring Jupiter? (OTOH, I tried doing a Google image search on site:nasa.gov without any good hits.) Ben Hocking ^{(talk|contribs)} 14:25, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Galileo never imaged Elara, as it's one of Jupiter's small irregular outer moons. Also, because of its small size, it is most likely not round. I've seen images like that listed as images of the outer Jovian moons before on some random websites, but I have no clue why or how that started. The image in question appears to be Io. --Patteroast 00:55, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I knew this seemed familiar! This image has been put on this page before. --Patteroast 01:00, 25 July 2007 (UTC)