Monthly Archives: April 2013

astronomy, IAU, Uwingu, Uwingu Fund

And Now We Suggest the Naming of Planets

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Thus Stirring up a Tempest

The International Astronomical Union took the interesting step of announcing yesterday in a press release that IT and only IT is responsible for the final names of planets and other celestial objects. This is nothing new.  The IAU does have responsibility to coordinate the naming of objects in space for astronomical use. However,  the august body of astronomers seems overly concerned about the Uwingu Fund’s contest to suggest planet names for possible use. The proceeds of that contest will be used to fund science research and science education (a useful thing in these days of budget silliness and sequestration).

The contest seems to follow the IAU’s welcoming attitude toward popular names for exoplanets. On its own Web page about naming of objects, the IAU states,

“However, considering the ever increasing interest of the general public in being involved in the discovery and understanding of the Universe, the IAU decided in 2013 to restart the discussion of the naming procedure for exoplanets and asses [sic] the need to have popular names as well. In 2013 the members of Commission 53 will be consulted in this respect and the result of this will be made public on this page.”

Having popular names actually seems to invite public participation in suggesting names, no?

It is true that IAU has filled the role of arbiter for naming celestial objects— which serves a good function so that when astronomer A refers to a certain star by its name (say, Sirius, for example) that Astronomer B  doesn’t say, “Well, we’ve always called that star “Blargh”.  So, many years ago, IAU was given the responsibility of coming up with a procedure to name things in space.  I don’t see a problem with this because having a “bookkeeper” of nomenclature is an important function and keeping track of names helps astronomers avoid confusion referring to distant stars, galaxies, planets, etc.  But, it seems to me that IAU has normally been open to suggestions for names, along certain guidelines. Hence the idea that we name places on Venus’s surface after prominent women, for example.

The reaction to the IAU press release was swift, with some Web sites and self-proclaimed experts online claiming Uwingu was somehow doing something wrong or others saying that that IAU is wrong and overstepping its bounds.

So, to understand more about what Uwingu is currently doing and the function of the IAU in all this, I read the IAU pages about naming AND I took the radical step of actually READING Uwingu’s Web site to make sure I understood their project completely.

I’ve known about Uwingu since Alan Stern told me about it last year. And, it has always been clear to me that Uwingu is not seeking to sell planet names. In fact, their Web site is pretty clear about what they’re doing. In the Uwingu FAQ, it says:

“Here at Uwingu, we’re asking the public to create a vast list of planet names for astronomers to choose from. [emphasis mine] In fact, astronomers may not even have to choose, since they will eventually need 160 billion or more planet names! And, after all, who wants planets to be known solely by geeky technical identifiers, such as 51 Peg b or Upsilon Andromeda c?”

And, that’s the gist of it.  If you donate a few dollars, you get to suggest a name. You donate a  few cents and you can vote for the coolest names. The coolest names win prizes. The money goes to research and education.

Nowhere does it say that you’re buying the right to name a planet, as seems to be suggested by the IAU press release.

NOWHERE.

Some officials at the IAU seem to not understand this,  and in my opinion the organization  jumped the gun by misinterpreting the contest. (I wonder if anyone at IAU actually contacted Uwingu??)

As Alan Stern has said about this issue, suggesting names for astronomers to use for planets is a way for the public to get involved in the excitement of planetary discovery.  Even if a planet has the official name of “Alpha Centauri Bb”, having it also bear the unofficial name “Heinlein” or “Bardot” or whatever is NO different from a star having the officially “approved” name alpha Canis Majoris but also being known as Sirius, or HIP 32349 (in the Hipparcos catalog).  There are many new planets being discovered, and while they will have official designations, having popular names will bring the excitement of exploration to a larger public audience.

There’s a long tradition in astronomy (both amateur and professional) to give objects second and even third names. You see it all over the sky: the Pleiades are also known as the “Seven Sisters”; the “Coathanger” is named for a cluster also known as Brocchi’s Cluster, which lies in Sagitta,and is part of the Collinder Catalog of objects and has the number Cr 399.  There will be a tendency to give newly discovered exoplanets second and third names, and so a contest to suggest those names is a useful part of the process.

I suggest that IAU actually get in contact with Uwingu to clarify its understanding of the contest.  The IAU officers could start by actually reading the contest pages and the FAQ (just as I did, and I didn’t need a PhD in astronomy to do even that little bit of research).  That would be the respectful and adult way to come to an understanding of Uwingu’s mission to suggest names for distant planets. The fact that it seems to dovetail with IAU’s own openness to popular names should be a plus. And, perhaps a public apology for this misinterpretation on IAU’s part should be proffered to the scientists and educators at Uwingu (some of whom are also IAU members) who have poured so much time and effort into a project that is designed to get the public interested in astronomy.

[Thanks to D. Fischer for pointing out a couple of typographical errors; now corrected. Also, the link to the IAU press release (which was not responding when I first posted this entry) is now live, and included in the first sentence.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

alma, radio astronomy, Sagittarius A*

Could Stars Form Near Black Holes?

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Apparently They Can in the Milky Way

While I was gone a lot of really good astronomy  news came out.  It’s tough to stay on touch onboard ship, what with access being expensive and not very fast, so I stockpiled stories until I could get home and read more about them. One of the tales that caught my eye was a study made by the newly commissioned Atacama Large Millimeter Array, an international collaboration in millimeter and submillimeter astronomy between North America, Europe, and East Asia. In the U.S. it falls under the wing of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and is funded by the National Science Foundation. ALMA is a single instrument composed of 66 high-precision antennas that function as one telescope.

19ALMAGarnier (1)
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array at its 16,500 ft elevation site in northern Chile. ALMA is becoming the most powerful telescope of its kind in the world. At the time of this photo, 19 radio telescopes were in the array. The initial array of 66 radio telescopes is now complete and stretches over a nearly 100 square mile area. CREDIT: W. Garnier, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

As part of its scientific study of the universe, ALMA focused its attention on the center of our Milky Way, looking for tracers of star formation in the region. The core of our galaxy has at least one massive black hole at its heart, and as most folks now know, a black hole’s neighborhood is not usually considered a great place to raise little stars to become big ones. For one thing, the gravity of a black hole produces tidal forces that would disrupt any nearby clouds of gas and dust that could be sites for star formation.  The whole region of the black hole is not very hospitable, and of course, anything that gets TOO close to the accretion disk of a black hole runs the very real risk of getting caught up in the strong gravitational pull of the singularity.

A combined ALMA and Very Large Array (VLA) image of the galactic center. The supermassive black hole is marked by its traditional symbol Sgr A*. The red and blue areas, taken with ALMA, map the presence of silicon monoxide, an indicator of star formation. The blue areas have the highest velocities, blasting out at 150-200 kilometers per second. The green region, imaged with the VLA, traces hot gas around the black hole and corresponds to an area 3.5 by 4.5 light-years. Credit: Yusef-Zadeh et al., ALMA (ESO, NAOJ, NRAO), NRAO/AUI/NSF.
A combined ALMA and Very Large Array (VLA) image of the galactic center. The supermassive black hole is marked by its traditional symbol Sgr A*. The red and blue areas, taken with ALMA, map the presence of silicon monoxide, an indicator of star formation. The blue areas have the highest velocities, blasting out at 150-200 kilometers per second. The green region, imaged with the VLA, traces hot gas around the black hole and corresponds to an area 3.5 by 4.5 light-years.
Credit: Yusef-Zadeh et al., ALMA (ESO, NAOJ, NRAO), NRAO/AUI/NSF.

Yet, over the past decade or so, astronomers have observed massive youngish stars moving rapidly in the vicinity of the black hole (which is called Sagittarius A*) and that prompted them wonder about where those stars came from. Did they form somewhere else and migrate to the bustling neighborhood of the black hole?  Or, did they somehow form in clouds of gas and dust despite the odds of their stellar birth creches being torn apart by the gravity of the black hole?

ALMA took a look at the region, trying to spy out radio emissions from molecules of silicon monoxide (SiO).  This stuff is found in most molecular clouds where stars form, and when the process of star birth reaches a certain stage, SiO becomes excited. That means it is heated and gives off emissions in millimeter and the microwave wavelengths that ALMA can detect. The SiO becomes part of a river of superheated material that flows away from a newborn star in a jet-like structure, and that makes these molecules tracers of star formation in a cloud.

When ALMA studied the Sagittarius A* neighborhood, it found telltale jets of material flowing away from extremely dense cocoons of gas and dust not all that far from the black hole. Those jets likely indicate the presence of star formation inside the cocoons.  If so, it means that the clouds have enough material and self gravity to somehow resist the gravitational pull of the black hole next door. And, because of that, such clouds could have been the birthplaces of the hot young stars we already see whizzing around in the core of the galaxy. It’s a neat finding, and just the sort of result that ALMA will study in the universe at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths of radiation.

ALMA had its first light earlier this year and is now in what’s called “science verification”. This is a period where the instruments in the array get tested on real targets. In addition, as new parts of the array come on line throughout the year, they will be added to the observing power of the full array and tested as well. Eventually 66 antennas will be able to focus on the sky, giving astronomers 71,000 square feet of radio light collecting area. This will allow them to look farther out through space, and look at dim, distant, and small objects and processes in the universe.