Think of the names of the newly discovered exoplanets?



    For decades, names for celestial bodies / space objects have been created by scientists. These names, of course, are catalogs, something like CFBDSIR2149, HD 189733b, 55 Cancri e, and Kepler-69c. There are names and more complicated. In general, scientists continue to name most of the newly discovered space objects, however, they made an exception for the newly discovered exoplanets. To popularize astronomical science, it was decided to attract ordinary people to create “beautiful” names for exoplanets. And now any of us can offer our own name, however, we need to follow some rules.

    For example, the proposed name should not be longer than 16 characters. It should be, in most cases, one word. In addition, the proposed name should sound more or less the same when read by native speakers of different languages. Of course, the name given by a native speaker of one language should not be an insult / stupidity for a native speaker of another language.

    Most important: don’t offer proper names that are common for pets. You cannot offer names associated with TM / brands. The planet Samsung or Apple, of course, will be very good at advertising companies of the same name, but, fortunately, such names are prohibited.

    Another rule says that a name that is very similar to an existing one that bears some kind of space object cannot be offered either.

    By the way, the public was also attracted to naming the two recently discovered satellites of Pluto, and Kerberos and Styx (Cerberus and Styx) were chosen. But the winning name, Vulcan, was rejected by the International Astronomical Community.

    If there are many proposals for exoplanets, a vote will also be taken. You can send suggestions to iaupublic@iap.fr (I can imagine how much spam will be sent to this address). You can read (in English) about the "naming" of the planets here in this document (.pdf).

    Via IAU

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