Write the name of the loved ones in heaven. Nicole Kidman named a star Forever Tom for her then-husband, Tom Cruise. Winona Ryder immortalized her friend Johnny Depp with the Jun star. Since 1979, a North American company has been dedicated to putting the name you want to one of the stars in the sky for a price that ranges between 54 and 154 dollars.
And you are very free to do so and so you can do the panoli like our famous natives Chenoa, Bisbal, Andy and Lucas or the presenter Jesús Vázquez. There is no denying that the idea, as a business, is great. The supply of raw material is enormous. And more importantly, free: in our Milky Way alone we have a hundred billion stars. The curious thing is that none of the companies dedicated to such a romantic idea has the right to do so , at least officially, even if they publish a book with the list of all “assigned” names and send it to the famous Library of Congress of the USA or keep it in a safe deposit box in Switzerland. He won’t get out of there because, let’s not fool ourselves, the stars already have his name.
The brightest ones were baptized by ancient astronomers, such as Antares, Deneb, Albireo or the most striking Zubenelgenubi. The rest of those that we can see with the naked eye, about 6,000 on a dark night, are called by a Greek letter (sometimes a number) and the name of the constellation to which they belong in Latin: Omicron 2 Canis Majoris (o2CMa ). The rest, if they have been properly registered, bear the name assigned in the catalog in which they appear , such as HR 2491. It does not sound very romantic, but they are their real names.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU), founded in 1919 to promote international collaboration among astronomers, has 40 independent commissions that name all the objects belonging to their respective areas. For example, Commission 27 deals with galaxies and stars, while Commission 5 is the one that gives names to comets and asteroids, of which there are a good handful waiting to be baptized. This honor belongs to the discoverer who must be approved by the IAU Committee on Minor Planet Nomenclature . The astronomer can think about it because he has up to ten years to propose one. After that period, anyone can do it.
At first they were given a female name borrowed from classical mythology, but they soon sold out. Then the discoverers began to choose conveniently feminized characters from the works of Shakespeare or Wagner’s operas , especially if the asteroids are between Mars and Jupiter. When those names were also exhausted, names of their wives, lovers, fellow astronomers, friends appeared… The American astronomer EE Barnard, discoverer of 5 satellites of Jupiter, has been honored with Barnarciana (819), and his wife Rhoda also entered on stage when the 907 was named after it. The Finnish Olympic runner Paavo Nurmi has his and the musicians Mozart, Debussy and Leonard Bernstein, as well as a whole assortment of Japanese lakes and rivers, the millionaires Rockefeller and Carnegie, the battleship Potemkin, the Beatles, Spielberg, Lenin and, of course, , Elvis.
A few years ago, and because of bitter political disputes, it was agreed that the names of the new asteroids should contain a single word of easy pronunciation with less than 16 characters. Of course, obscene or tasteless names are out of place. And if you want to immortalize a politician, he must have died 100 years ago. This rule came into use when Soviet astronomers began to name the asteroids they discovered after their most famous generals, such as Georgiu Zhukov. For the same reason, the name of an event cannot be chosen unless at least a century has elapsed. And neither is the name of companies or products (Coca Cola and Pepsi left out of the cast), nor any other that sounds like an advertisement.
Interestingly, one of the most controversial names was that of asteroid 2309 (which means that it was 2309 when its orbit was calculated) or 1971 QX1: Mr. Spock. It is not an homage to the Vulcan science officer of the USS Enterprise starship from the science fiction series Star Trek , but to the tabby kitten of the discovering astronomer from whom it was named. And here was the problem: naming minor bodies after pets is not recommended.
Now, if you discover any within the group of asteroids known as Trojans, you are bound to seek a name among the heroes of the Trojan War. Moreover, those found at the so-called Lagrange point L4 must be Greek; those of L5, Trojans (let’s not mess it up). Those that are close to Neptune must have a name related to the underworld and if they are located beyond, mythological names related to creation. Finally, if a new asteroid passes close to Earth, nothing to call it Pepe; must have a mythological name.
If you find yourself in the trouble of naming one, be very careful when choosing it, because once it is on it is not easy to take it off . An Argentine astronomer baptized the asteroid 1569 with the name of Evita in honor of Eva Perón. When he later tried to take it away, the rest of the world’s astronomers refused.
