The International Astronomical Union, the world's authority that has the fun task of naming objects in space, is giving you..the public..a chance to name up to 30 planets from a group of 305 exoplanets( extrasolar planets - planets outside of our solar system). All of these planets were discovered before 2009, so these are not new discoveries.
Since the 1920s the IAU has had the mammoth cataloguing task of naming every planetary body spotted by astronomers, including planets, stars and the less glamorous but much more commonplace asteroids, of which there are hundreds of thousands. Normally, the naming system used by the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature results in some less than memorable planet names – such as Gliese 581 g, a potentially habitable exoplanet located 20 light-years away.
Tell me more, you say. Then zoom over the orange asteroid and I will.
But for the first time, the naming process has now been opened up to the public. On Wednesday, the IAU, in association with crowd-sourcing veterans Zooniverse, announced a worldwide competition to give "popular names to selected exoplanets along with their host stars". The idea, in a nutshell, is that any registered astronomical society, club or related non-profit organisation can suggest a name for any of the 305 handpicked planets. The names can be up to 16 letters long and cannot feature living people or names likely to be divisive, or pets. The most popular names will then be put forward to an online public poll in March next year, through the new web platform NameExoWorld, where up to 30 planets will be christened
This internet polling is not new to the IAU. It was done before to name the two newly discovered moons of Pluto. Styx and Kerberos were the winners of that poll. It is hoped that engaging the public in helping name these planets will raise awareness of astronomy and what the AIU do
Rules and regulations of the contest can be found here:
http://www.iau.org/...