I knew that no good would come of all this messing around by the IAU. Today’s news brings me a story in The Australian, labeled “breaking news” no less, about a professor who is pleading with the IAU to “keep the universe Greek.” Apparently this fellow, who is director of the Athens Observatory in Greece (and therefore has something of a vested interest in all things Greek) is shocked (shocked, I tell you) that Mike Brown of Caltech has been referring to asteroid 2003 UB313 as “Xena.” Mind you, Dr. Brown isn’t suggesting that as the proper name for this body, but he did it as a sort of tribute to the folks who have searched for Planet X all these years. And, to be fair, he IS playing by IAU rules in that he has 9 years to come up with a proper, approved name for his discovery.

This seems to make no difference to Dr. Christos Goudis of the Athens Observatory. He’s insisting that astronomy’s deep roots should be maintained—apparently as long as those roots begin with the Greek naming and heritage of sky objects.

Well, I have some news for Dr. Goudis. With all due respect to the tremendous contributions the Greeks made to astronomy and science (and they are considerable), astronomy as a science and in nomenclature didn’t start with the Greeks. There have been just a few other people over the centuries who have made good contributions, too. For example, anybody of Assyrian descent could feel rightly slighted that we’re being forced to call that ringed planet “Saturn,” instead of the older and more ominous-sounding “Lubadsagush.” That’s a name that dates back well before the dawn of Greek civilization.

Or, how about that famous Babylonian planet, Nirgal? Also known as Salbatanu to the ancient Akkadians. Also known as Horus the Red to the Egyptians, Nabu to the Babylonians, Verethragna to the Persians, and Artagnes to other Persians well before it became Pyroeis to the early Greeks, Ares to the later Greeks, and finally Mars to the Romans and the rest of us. Which name gets priority in this lengthy and ancient progression that stretches back well beyond many early cultures?

Okay, so you get the point. The naming of parts in the sky is a mishmash, as anybody who’s read star charts will agree.Personally I kind of like a lot of the Arabic names enshrined “up there” along with Greek and Latin and all sorts of other naming conventions. The point here is that there’s not one ethnic or cultural group that has primacy over star names, planet names, or anything. It’s the job of the IAU to keep the names straight. I think the gentleman from Athens should calm down, have some ouzo, and remember that even the Greeks (who gave us so many interesting things culturally and scientifically) were preceded and postceded by others who also had good things to contribute. And frankly, the temporary name “Xena” isn’t worth kvetching over, let alone sending impassioned pleas to the IAU about.

I’m working on a new show about Mars and thus have become a “sink” for Mars info. Humans have a record number of spacecraft at or on the planet right now, and getting images every few days or so from one or the other of them is like having a webcam on the red planet. The latest picture is something of a “weather report,” showing high, thin clouds that are pretty rare at the altitudes they’ve been found over the Martian surface.

What’s the scoop here? Back in 1997, the Mars Pathfinder rover snapped an image of wispy looking clouds at Mars. The big mystery was, since most clouds seemed to be closer to the Martian surface, what were these high fliers and how did they form?

Astronomers using the European Space Agency’s SPICAM instrument (an infrared spectrometer that measures what the clouds do to starlight as it passes through them) actually found a NEW layer of high, thin clouds at Mars. They seem to be made of carbon dioxide crystals that exist 80 to 100 kilometers (50 to 60 miles) up in the already thin carbon-dioxide atmosphere. You can read more details about the SPICAM findings here.

Why the interest in clouds? Although many images we see are of ground formations (craters, dunes, canyons, and volcanoes) on Mars, the atmosphere is an equally important component of the planet. Among other things, if you study the atmosphere for a long-enough time, you can build up a seasonal picture of change in the different atmospheric layers. It’s also important to know atmospheric density, since this affects the entry of spacecraft into the planet’s atmosphere.

I often wonder what future Mars explores will do with all this data we’re collecting today. Surely it will help refine their exploration routes and approaches. I wish we’d get there soon, so I can find out!