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One of the benefits of making a discovery is that you can name what you discovered. Astronomy is particularly fortunate in this regard. There are more stars in the observable universe than grains of sand on Earth: trillions of billions, enough for each galaxy to share a name with every human who has lived or lived and every god or monster that comes from someone’s imagination.
And in the last two decades there has been an abundance of opportunities to name astronomical discoveries, thanks to the discovery of planets that orbit other stars , potentially sites that hold life or some adventure for the distant future. However, until now, these discovered exoplanets do not really have names, only collections of numbers that sound more like codes for secret agents: HD 156411 or HAT-P-5b.
The issue of nomenclatures is rigidly managed by the International Astronomical Union (UAI), but now that group wants to share the fun as part of its hundredth anniversary and allow virtually every country in the world to name an exoplanet and its star.
On June 7, the astronomical organization released a list of stars and their planets for the IAU100 NameExoWorlds contest , to which 79 countries have already joined. Each star on the list has enough visibility to be seen with a telescope from the country that will name it.
Eduardo Penteado, astronomer of the Brazilian Museum of Astronomy and Aflences Sciences in Rio de Janeiro, is managing the project for the UAI. He said that the process is just beginning, but that there is already considerable interest. “Some national campaigns have already received many name proposals,” he said via email. “In Greece there were 1500 proposals only this weekend.”
Stephen Pompea, of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory and who leads the US campaign to name exoplanet HD 17156 of the Cassiopeia constellation, said they began receiving proposals as soon as the program was announced. He said that some of the first were names inspired by Tolkien’s works: Sauron and Wilwarin.
Since 1995, about four thousand exoplanets have been discovered in the Milky Way, through NASA ships such as Kepler and TESS , as well as telescopes on Earth. Due to that amount already discovered, it can be assumed that there are billions of worlds possibly habitable only in our galaxy. Additional observations to the discovery indicate that several hundred of those exoplanets would be habitable.
The UAI has 11,000 members from 93 countries and was founded in 1919 to promote scientific cooperation. Normally, whoever discovers a new planet or moon has the right to suggest names for the UAI to decide the end.
But the union is not blind to the opportunities to find names a little more attractive for certain places that can acquire scientific fame. In fact, the current UAI project was partially inspired by a 2015 campaign that invited people to vote for the winning name of fourteen stars and the 31 planets that orbit them. They obtained half a million votes from 182 countries and territories.
From there arose, among others, a system of four planets that share Cervantes inspiration (Quijote, Dulcinea, Rocinante and Sancho) in the constellation of Ara. In the Big Dipper are Taphao Thong and Taphao Kaew, inspired by a Thai legend of an evil crocodile.
In the current contest the astronomers of each country have the responsibility to organize their own local campaigns to attract the votes of the public. It is especially sought that there are indigenous names or phrases that reflect the culture and historical traditions of each participating nation.
The national coordinators will then present some final candidates to the governing committee of the UAI, which will review the names to make sure they comply with the rules: that they can be pronounced, that they do not have political, military or religious references and that they do not refer to people alive
“The NameExoWorlds initiative reminds us that we are all together under the same sky,” said Drabe Elmegreen, president-elect of the UAI, in an email.
So far there are 79 countries with campaigns, but any nation can join in establishing its own campaign.
“It will take some effort, but it should be fun,” said Elmegreen.
Source: NYTimesES
