Don’t call me Colin

Recently the International Astronomical Union decided that planets might start getting named after things. Previously they’d been given a lower-case letter after the name of their host star. Now they could get other names, something that inspired this memorable XKCD cartoon.

Well it turns out some of the planets aren’t terribly happy about the prospect too. In-fact Gliese 581d is pretty miserable about the idea of getting a dull or bizarre name, especially if you decide to name it after your cat, Colin. Gl 581d is a planet that’s a bit more massive than the Earth orbiting a faint, red star in the constellation of Libra. It might have a temperature that means it isn’t too hot or too cold to have liquid water (the so-called “Goldilocks zone“). This means it might have life. All it wants is to get a nice mythical name like the planets in the Solar System, preferably Norse but any pantheon would do. It really doesn’t want to be called after a celebrity or your mum or Permadeath, just a nice normal, mythical name. It’s been bombarded by comets for a billion years so don’t you think it deserves a break?

Be careful however, there are some mythical names are a bad choice, particularly Vulcan. This was a planet proposed around the Sun to explain the unusual orbit of Mercury. However it wasn’t there, the change in Mercury’s orbit was due to a subtle gravitation effect that wasn’t properly understood until Einstein came along with his theory of General Relativity.

Sometimes people have named stars for monetary or patriotic reasons like Herschel originally naming Uranus “George’s Star” after the British king at the time, so steer clear of that. Also a lot of asteroids have unusual names like Moomintroll, and it isn’t keen on that either. So please give a planet a break and name it something sensible.

Thanks to @ruthangus for doing the drawing, @emilulu and Russ for helping record this at AMNH, @astrodrian for lending me his guitar, @noisyastronomer for her camera and to .astronomy and the NERD Centre. The video was partly inspired by “Hey There Andy Murray” by Far-In Jim.

The audio file is also on Soundcloud.