• Question: how do you name the planets?

    Asked by Flo to Maggie, Ry, Scott on 16 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Ry Cutter

      Ry Cutter answered on 16 Nov 2017:

      There’s usually a boring way we name planets when we first discover them. Annoyingly there are two ways!
      .
      -The first part is named after what telescope found them, or what number star they are in a certain group.
      Anything that starts with OGLE was found by the OGLE telescope
      53 Pegasi means the planet was found around the 53rd star in the Pegasus constellation
      .
      -The second part is then what number star it is in the catalogue.
      So if you found the a planet around the 500th in the OGLE search we’d write OGLE-500
      .
      -Finally, there is a letter at the end. ‘a’ means the star, ‘b’ means the first planet, ‘c’ means the second planet etc.
      51 Pegasi b, is therefore the first planet around the 51st star in the Pegasus constellation.
      OGLE-32-f, would be the fifth planet around around the 32nd star in the OGLE search!
      .
      If the planets or stars are interesting we then give them better names! Trappist for example was of great interest (7 Earth like planets!) . So scientists named it after a beer brand! Scientists can be strange sometimes.
      Fantastic question,
      Ryan

    • Photo: Maggie Lieu

      Maggie Lieu answered on 16 Nov 2017:

      The planets in our solar system are named after gods and goddesses’ this is because they were named a long time ago! In the olden days people couldn’t see planets outside our solar system but now scientists have found ways to find them using telescopes.

      Now a days there is an organisation that is responsible for naming all astronomical objects called the international astronomical union.
      The rule is that they are named after the telescope that discovered it, then a number that tells us which solar system it was found in and then a letter to tell the order the planet was found (if there are more than one planet in the system).

      E.g. CoRoT-7b was found with the CoRoT telescope, in the 7th solar system that they found with planets and it was the 2nd planet found in that solar system

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