Podcaster: Richard Drumm
Title: Space Scoop: The Cosmic Name Game
Organization: 365 Days Of Astronomy
Link : astrosphere.org ; http://unawe.org/kids/unawe1535/
Description: Space scoop, news for children.
Bio: Richard Drumm is President of the Charlottesville Astronomical Society and President of 3D – Drumm Digital Design, a video production company with clients such as Kodak, Xerox and GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals. He was an observer with the UVa Parallax Program at McCormick Observatory in 1981 & 1982. He has found that his greatest passion in life is public outreach astronomy and he pursues it at every opportunity.
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Transcript:
This is 365 Days of Astronomy. Today we bring you a new episode in our Space Scoop series. This show is produced in collaboration with Universe Awareness, a program that strives to inspire every child with our wonderful cosmos.
Today’s story is…
The Cosmic Name Game
Do you have a pet? What is it called? (OK, if you don’t have a pet, imagine what you would name it if you did have one.) Now imagine your pet giving birth to ten babies. What would you call them? Now imagine each baby giving birth to ten more babies. What would you call them?
It probably won’t be long before you ran out of names. Imagine trying to name all the cosmic wonders in the night sky. You’d need an endless imagination.
Just a few hundred of the brightest objects in space have been given traditional names, like Jupiter, Bellatrix and Andromeda. Most other objects are labelled with a mix of letters and numbers.
It’s a little bit like a shopping catalog with the letters being like a codename for the catalog, and the numbers being a page number. For example, the so-called “open cluster” of stars in the picture in today’s album artwork has the name IC 4651, and is in the Southern constellation Ara.
The image was acquired with the 67 million pixel WFI, the Wide Field Imager on the 2.2 meter telescope at the ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.
This cluster was first written down in the Index Catalog, this is where the IC in its name comes from. The number that follows gives us a way to find the cluster in the catalog.
So for example, this star cluster was the 4,651st object listed in the Index Catalog. The names are not very exciting, but it’s easier than trying to think of millions of different proper names!
Astronomers have been writing down the names, locations and features of space objects for a long time. The first cosmic catalog was created around 4,000 years ago by the Babylonians! And new star catalogs are still being created today. In 2014, astronomers made a catalog of over 84 million stars in our Milky Way!
Hey Here’s A Cool Fact:
One of the most famous cosmic catalogs is called the Messier Catalog. To discover the 110 beautiful objects in this catalogue, why not play a game of Messier Bingo at lcogt.net/messierbingo/
Thank you for listening to 365 Days of Astronomy!
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by NUCLIO. Audio post-production by Richard Drumm. Bandwidth donated by libsyn.com and wizzard media. You may reproduce and distribute this audio for non-commercial purposes. Please consider supporting the podcast with a few dollars (or Euros!). Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org. This year we celebrate cosmic light as light is our info messenger in the universe. Join us and share your story to celebrate the International Year of Light. Until tomorrow! Goodbye!