Petelgeuse! Petelgeuse! Petelgeuse!
Did it explode? no? Well, then.
But I think it’s fair to ask why “Betelgeuse”? It’s a strange-looking star name. Because it’s a corrupted translation of the Arabic phrase ‘Yad al-Jawz’This roughly translates to “Hand of Orion.” An apt nickname for this star represents the constellation’s raised arm.
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Many of the star names we use today are actually of Arabic origin. Alexandrian astronomer Claudius Ptolemy created a star map of the sky for his highly popular book mathematics paperwritten in Greek around 150 AD. Translated into Arabic over 1,000 years ago, it was given the following nickname: Alma GuestAs such, it is a corruption of the Arabic version of the Greek word meaning “largest,” and many of the Arabic versions of star names were retained even when the map was translated into other languages. Rigel, Deneb Aldebaran, and many of the other brightest stars in the sky trace their names to such quirks in ancient publishing.
Others began as nicknames, such as Polaris, named for its position in the sky near the celestial north pole, and ruddy Antares, literally meaning “rival of Mars.” Additionally, some stars are named after the astronomers who studied them, such as Barnard’s star and Van Maanen’s star. This is clearly a less-than-ideal naming method and can lead to confusion as to what a star should actually be called.
With thousands of stars visible to the naked eye at night, you might think they’d soon be out of names. However, since fewer than 1,000 stars have unique names, the situation does not seem to be critical. hundreds of billions Stars of the Milky Way! So the problem is not to name it, but to name it consistently.
Different ancient cultures had their own names for stars, but as the world became more interconnected, astronomers tried many systems to standardize names and nomenclature, with varying degrees of success.
One of the first modern astronomical works, published in 1603, was devised by the German astronomer Johann Beyer. He named each star according to its ranking of apparent brightness in a particular constellation, using the Greek alphabet and the genitive (possessive) case of the constellation name. So, for example, the brightest star in the constellation Orion is called Alpha Orionis, the second brightest star Beta Orionis, and so on. However, there are two problems with this system. First, the Greek alphabet only has 24 letters, which limits the names that can be used in this way. Second, stars change in brightness over time, which can wreak havoc on the order of star names in constellations.
About a century later, British astronomer John Flamsteed came up with the idea of ​​using numbers instead of letters. This avoided one of Bayer’s problems. Also, instead of using the star’s sometimes changing brightness, he specified them by their position within the constellation, starting at the western edge of the constellation and moving east. So, for example, Orion 1 is not the brightest star in the constellation Orion, but it is the closest star to its western edge.
This also has its problems. Because the boundaries of constellations were not formally defined until they were approved by the International Astronomical Union in 1928, Flamsteed’s catalog may list stars as being in one constellation when they are actually in another. There was something that happened. Also, Flamsteed only cataloged the stars visible from England, which excludes much of the southern sky that is not visible from that latitude.
Additionally, there is the Bonner Durchmusterung catalog and its latest edition, created by astronomers at Germany’s Bonn Observatory in the mid-to-late 1800s. This was the last great catalog assembled before photography revolutionized astronomical observation. It covers faint stars down to magnitude 9 and classifies them by declination (such as latitude, but angle in the sky). Then along came Henry Draper’s catalogs from the early 20th century. This catalog is named after the American amateur astronomer and astrophotographer. The Draper catalog contains spectroscopic information for stars, which provides more detailed information about the properties of the stars involved, such as temperature, size, and composition.
As telescopes and photographic equipment improved, fainter stars became visible and the catalog grew significantly. There were also other attributes of the stars that were noteworthy, such as their physical movement in the sky relative to each other, but these usually only become apparent after years of careful observation. As larger telescopes were built in the southern hemisphere, all-sky surveys were also possible, creating the need for even larger and better catalogs. By the 1990s, the numbers were astronomical. One project, the U.S. Naval Observatory Catalog, used observations made on thousands of wide-field glass plates to systematize an incredible body of data. 1 billion objects Created from more than 3 billion observations, it lists stars as faint as magnitude 21 (about 1 million times fainter than the faintest star visible to the naked eye).
When the Hubble Space Telescope was being built, astronomers realized that they needed a very precise list of star positions and brightnesses to point it properly, and now it contains nearly a billion stars. Guide Star Catalog has been created. These are observed by Hubble’s special sensors, which use the known star positions to navigate the telescope to where it needs to aim.
There are more catalogs, but the latest and most complete one is from Gaia, the European Space Agency’s mission that aims to measure the brightness, position, motion, and color of stars and other space objects with incredible precision. It’s a thing. The Gaia team releases new datasets every few years, with the latest measurements focusing on stellar features. The latest release includes new information about about 2 billion stars in the Milky Way.
There are too many stars in these more modern datasets (too many to mention individually) that giving them any kind of name is hopeless. Instead, it is common to identify objects using an alphanumeric designation that combines a catalog name and the star’s position in the sky. So, for example, a 2-micron all-sky survey would show a star listed as 2MASS J05551028+0724255, which represents the coordinates of right ascension 05 hours 55 minutes 10.28 seconds and declination 07 degrees 24 minutes 25.5 seconds. What is another name for that star? Betelgeuse.
With the holiday season and traditional gift-giving approaching, it’s hard not to note that multiple advertising campaigns by various disreputable “star-naming” companies exist on social media and elsewhere. I can’t. These promise that you will be able to name a star that will be published in a catalog somewhere, used by astronomers, or stored in a vault (sometimes of your own choosing, some not. ). It’s very stylish! Let me be clear: this is nonsense. These are vanity sales, and astronomers everywhere will never know or use the names of stars purchased from these companies. Many of these companies target grieving people by naming them after stars who have lost a loved one, but I personally cringe at such messages. Don’t fall for this malicious scam.
Anyway, the unavoidable problem here is that any star has many names, and you can stick to the legitimate one. a many. For example, our old friend Betelgeuse has 46 names listed in SIMBAD, a database of objects outside our solar system. Indeed, in that case everyone would just call it “Betelgeuse”. That’s because its name is recognized (and it’s fun to say), but for other stars, the name used depends on which astronomer is observing it. how It has been observed. A star may have been discovered by an infrared astronomical survey, but it may also have been discovered independently by radio observations, so astronomers may have assigned a star to them, depending on which part of the spectrum they are most familiar with. It will be called by a different name.
But I’m okay with this. This gives some flexibility in naming, and it’s not difficult to find out which names apply to which stars.
And of course, in the end, stars with other names will shine just as beautifully.
