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Star designation |
Designations of stars (and other celestial bodies) are done by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Many of the star names in use today were inherited from the time before the IAU existed. Other names, mainly for variable stars (including novae and supernovae), are being added all the time. Most stars, however, have no name and are referred to, if at all, by means of catalogue numbers. This article briefly surveys some of the methods used to designate stars.
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Most bright naked eye stars have traditional names, most of which derive from Arabic, but a few from Latin. See List of traditional star names for a list of some of these names.
There are a number of problems with these names however:
In practice, the traditional names are only universally used for the very brightest stars (Sirius, Arcturus, Vega, etc) and for a small number of slightly less bright but "interesting" stars (Algol, Polaris, Mira, etc). For other naked eye stars, the Bayer designation is often preferred.
In addition to the traditional names, a small number of stars that are "interesting" can have modern English names. For instance Barnard's star has the highest known proper motion of any star and is thus notable even though it is far too faint to be seen with the naked eye. See stars named after people.
Two second-magnitude stars, Alpha Pavonis and Epsilon Carinae, were assigned the proper names Peacock and Avior respectively in 1937 by Her Majesty's Nautical Almanac Office during the creation of The Air Almanac, a navigational almanac for the Royal Air Force. Of the fifty-seven stars included in the new almanac, these two had no classical names. The RAF insisted that all of the stars must have names, so new names were invented for them.1
The book Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning by R.H.Allen (ISBN 0-486-21079-0) has had effects on star names:-
Johann Bayer introduced a system of designating the brightest stars in each constellation by means of Greek (or less often Latin) letters, a system which is still widely used. See Bayer designation for details.
John Flamsteed's numbering of stars within constellations have also remained popular, although Bayer's Greek letters are usually preferred when there is a choice. See Flamsteed designation for details.
Hevelius numbered stars within constellations similarly. His number system has fallen out of use, but Hevelius designations even now are occasionally mistakenly treated as Flamsteed designations.
Variable stars which do not have Bayer designations are given special designations which mark them out as variable stars. See variable star designation for details.
In the absence of any better means of designating a star, catalogue numbers are generally used. A great many different star catalogues are used for this purpose, see star catalogues.
There are companies that purport to name obscure stars after paying customers, but these names are recognized by nobody except the registering company and the customer. In particular, these names are neither used nor recognised by astronomers. There is nothing to stop two companies from claiming the same star, or even one company from registering the same star to two customers. Many astronomers view these organizations as frauds preying on people ignorant of star naming procedure.2
A very few stars are named for individuals; this is rare and many cases were unofficial names that became official.
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