ASTRONOMY: Lich/PSR B1257 + 12
Apr. 15th, 2020 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dewlineThe first planets humans found orbiting any other star at all couldn't be ordinary. Nope. The first two that humans found back in 1992 by Aleksander Wolszczan, just as I was winding up my animation studies at Algonquin College, were found orbiting a pulsar.
To oversimplify, a pulsar - or neutron star - is a corpse of a star. It's dead, Jim. But what's left of it still has an energy output or we wouldn't have been able to notice it at all.
Small wonder, then, that when the International Astronomical Union started up a program or contest - I'm trying to remember which at the moment - to give as many stars as possible proper names in addition to the various catalogue numbers that they've all accumulated across the last couple of centuries, that...to quote the Wikipedia entry of the moment:
In July 2014, the International Astronomical Union launched a process for giving proper names to certain exoplanets and their host stars. The process involved public nomination and voting for the new names. In December 2015, the IAU announced the winning names, submitted by the Planetarium Südtirol Alto Adige in Karneid, Italy, were Lich for the pulsar and Draugr, Poltergeist and Phobetor for planets A, B and C, respectively...
A "lich" is a kind of undead being, usually depicted as a sorceror who's managed to keep their remains active and controlled by their intellect or soul or whatever after death. And the names of the associated planets were kept in related themes as well...
To oversimplify, a pulsar - or neutron star - is a corpse of a star. It's dead, Jim. But what's left of it still has an energy output or we wouldn't have been able to notice it at all.
Small wonder, then, that when the International Astronomical Union started up a program or contest - I'm trying to remember which at the moment - to give as many stars as possible proper names in addition to the various catalogue numbers that they've all accumulated across the last couple of centuries, that...to quote the Wikipedia entry of the moment:
In July 2014, the International Astronomical Union launched a process for giving proper names to certain exoplanets and their host stars. The process involved public nomination and voting for the new names. In December 2015, the IAU announced the winning names, submitted by the Planetarium Südtirol Alto Adige in Karneid, Italy, were Lich for the pulsar and Draugr, Poltergeist and Phobetor for planets A, B and C, respectively...
A "lich" is a kind of undead being, usually depicted as a sorceror who's managed to keep their remains active and controlled by their intellect or soul or whatever after death. And the names of the associated planets were kept in related themes as well...
