New Zealand gets to name an exoplanet and its host star

Kiwis with a knack for coming up with just the right name have a chance to shine.

New Zealand, along with every other country, is being given an opportunity to come up with a name for an exoplanet - a planet outside our solar system - and its host star.

It's part of celebrations to mark the 100th anniversary of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the authority responsible for assigning official designations and names to celestial bodies.

Earlier in the month, the IAU said nearly 100 countries had already signed up to organise national campaigns to provide the public with an opportunity to vote.

According to Nasa exoplanet HD 137388 b is a gas giant, with a mass of 0.2 Jupiters, it takes 330 days to complete one orbit of its star, and is 0.89 astronomical units (the average distance between Earth and our Sun) from its star. Its discovery was announced in 2011.

The New Zealand contact is IAU national outreach coordinator Auckland University astrophysicist Nicholas Rattenbury.

The IAU said it was up to the national committee in each country to come up with a contest and a way to promote it. The plan is to announce names in December.

Proposed names should be of things, people, or places of long-standing cultural, historical, or geographical significance, worthy of being assigned to a celestial object. Speakers of Indigenous languages are encouraged to propose names drawn from those languages.

Among the rules, names should not be of individuals, places or events principally known for political, military or religious activities, and should not be of people still alive, or those who died less than a century ago.

The planetary systems selected for naming in the NameExoWorlds campaign could be seen with a small telescope in the latitude of the capital of each country, the IAU said.

To make sure every country is equal, all the systems chosen for the campaign are composed of just single stars with only one known orbiting planet.

Artist's conception of what the surface of the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1f may look like, based on available data about its diameter, mass and distances from the host star. The planets circle tightly around a dim dwarf star called Trappist-1, barely the size of Jupiter.

It's the second time the IAU has given the public a chance to name exo systems. The first time was in 2015 when the public provided names for 14 stars and 31 exoplanets orbiting them. That time there were more than half a million votes from 182 countries and territories.

Nasa data shows the existence of 4003 exoplanets has been confirmed, while there are 2979 planetary systems of stars with confirmed planets. Nasa missions have discovered another 3708 possible exoplanets that have yet to be confirmed.

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