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Astronomycast episode 657 Astronomy naming schemes. Welcome to Astronomycast for weekly

facts based journey through the cosmos. We help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know. I'm Fraser Kane, the publisher of University of A.A.

But a space and astronomy journalist for over 20 years and with me is Dr. Pamela Gay, a senior scientist for the planetary sciences institute and the

Director of Cosmical Quest. Hey, panel, how are you doing? I'm doing well. How are you doing? Good. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Canadian Thanksgiving.

Every year we record on the Canadian Thanksgiving because we record on Mondays and it's always on Mondays. And I always lord over you how much superior Canadian Thanksgiving is to US Thanksgiving for one reason.

Go ahead. Weather. It's that we hold our Thanksgiving a month earlier. Yeah. And that means that the weather is going to be better.

People are flying. It is less mayhem just because you're just going to have milder weather and so people can can make make the journey without it just being horrible snowstorms and and and such. And and once again we're you know having a drought here in western Canada. So if anybody wanted to fly the easy

flying to get out here western Canada but but yeah so happy Thanksgiving. I guess we'll take off US Thanksgiving but I will work through Canadian Thanksgiving.

But I still think they're going to launch SLS on American Thanksgiving which means we will be working right. I'll be working.

Right. Of course they absolutely will launching SLS on on some kind of holiday. Space is a big place with lots of galaxy stars planets moons and that means a lot of names. So how do astronomers name stuff like comets asteroids exoplanets creators.

All right. Everything's got a name. So I guess let's start with the the easy stuff the stuff that we've known the names of for antiquity. Where do we get those names from.

So so do you do you mean things like planets? Yeah the planets bright stars.

The mind. The sun. Right. These things have names. Where do they come from? So the original names for the the planets that we use in the English language.

They they simply come basically from the Greek and Roman names for them and and so we have Saturn is a Roman God. We have Jupiter is a Roman God but these are the Romanized versions of the Greek God's names.

So we basically just fell back on the names the Roman stole and changed and kept them for ourselves. But what about names like the moon or the sun?

Well the earth. Yeah that that is again just ancient language where I I am not the kind of anthropologist that can explain these truly ancient words that.

Right. Yeah. I mean earth is the dirt under our feet. The fact that it's a planet that we stand upon. That was like a hot minute to figure out.

But I think it's funny right like I get emails all the time from people and saying like you know what is the name of the moon? You know and I say it's the moon.

Yeah. And then someone will comment like no no it's Bluda but that's not true. That's just another language.

Yeah. Yeah the sun you know so whatever you want to call it earth, Tara just another word and the reason is because we didn't know the others.

Right. And so it's just like of course it's the moon it's a name for the thing that's in the sky and you don't realize it it's actually a classification of objects.

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