Established Member
When will the IAU approve more names for exoplanets?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._of_exoplanets
Does anyone have an idea when the IAU will start approving or even considering names for exoplanets? I believe we're at 5000+ exoplanets and some of us have cats who haven't had even an asteroid named for them.
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Found the rules for the 2014-2015 naming.
https://www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau1404/
Last edited by Roger E. Moore; 2019-Jan-31 at 06:31 PM. Reason: add new
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
— Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883)
Established Member
Personally, I don't think they should be allowed to name objects until they've been imaged.
That ship seems to have sailed unfortunately according to your second link.
Before New Horizons, you could've said "I theorise there will be a mountain approximately here on Pluto, and I name it after my cat xxxxx".
Established Member
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-volcan...ry-worlds.html
Found this Phys.org article on how the IAU gets about to naming things, after years or decades go by. [sigh]
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
— Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883)
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