Night Watch & Starry Night

Hundred years ago, in July 1919, the International Astronomical Union was founded and to celebrate this centenary, an interesting event has been organised, called NameExoWorlds.

A list was prepared of 112 exoplanets and each exoplanet was assigned to an IAU member state. The member states had to organise a public competition to find a suitable name for the exoplanet and its host star. The campaign started in June 2019 and on 17 December the chosen names have been published.

The exoplanet assigned to the Netherlands was HAT-P-6b, orbiting the star Hat-P-6 . Hat-P-6 is a star in the constellation Andromeda, at a distance of 910 lightyear, 30% more massive and also hotter than our Sun. The exoplanet Hat-P-6b has been discovered in 2007 through the transiting method.

It is a gas giant, slightly heavier than Jupiter, orbiting in less than 4 days around its host star. It is an example of what are called Hot Jupiters. Not suitable for life. Here is an image how Hat-P-6b might look like. Much larger because it is hot.

In the Netherlands the public came with more than 6000 suggestions. Most popular were the names Nijntje (for the planet) and Moederpluis (for the star). They are Dutch cartoon characters, famous all over the world. Here is a Japanese version.

A problem was that theses names are copyrighted, so finally number 2 on the shortlist was chosen. Night Watch for the planet and Starry Night for the star.

The Night Watch is a world famous painting by Rembrandt (1642).

And Starry Night is another famous painting, by van Gogh (1889). Now in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Are you interested about other exoplanets in the list? Click here and type the country name in the search box.

Or maybe you want to know which names other countries have chosen for their planet and star? Click then here .

As Malaysia is my 2nd home, I will show the results for Malaysia. Here are the exoplanet and the host star

HD 20868 is an orange dwarf star in the constellation Fornax, 156 lightyear away from us and 25 % smaller than the Sun. Its planet HD 20868b is also a gas giant, but orbiting farther away from its star in about 1 year. In the habitable zone, but as it is a gas giant, probably not very suitable for life.

I have no info about the campaign, apparently 1635 proposals have been made. Here is the final choice: the planet and star have been named after the Malay names of gemstones , Baiduri (Opal) for the planet and Intan (Diamond) for the star.

It is quite fun to see what other countries have chosen!