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On 22 July, in his opening speech of the 48th Parliament, the Prime Minister of Australia Anthony Albanese proudly referred to the star Epsilon Crucis, as “Ginan”, describing it as an “Australian star” because of the constellation’s position as a symbol of Australian identity. He noted that it “features in the Australian flag but not…
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In a multimonths debate, the WGSN has worked out the distribution of ten more names in the northern skies. Note that it is part of the IAU-policy to increase cultural diversity and represent as many cultures as possible, so please let us know if you know more historical names: we collect them in the All…
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In February and March, the WGSN applied four new names of traditional Chinese constellations to stars. ι Cen “Kulou” (库楼) means arsenal and storied building. It is a super-constellation in the area of modern Cen/Lup created in ancient China, dating back to the 2nd century BCE. ζ And “Tian Shi Mu“, The Eye of the…
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Dear friends of the IAU – WGSN, I am Paolo Palma, an elementary school teacher and visual astronomer for over 25 years. With this email I wanted to thank you deeply for the work you do, especially for building a site exclusively dedicated to the names of stars and even more for publishing the etymological…
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Press Release The International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) has approved 19 new proper names for stars in 2024, marking another significant step in the organization’s mission to catalogue and standardize stellar nomenclature.  These newly approved names draw from diverse cultural astronomical traditions, reflecting the IAU’s commitment to preserving humanity’s cultural…
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In the recent issue of JAHH, a paper argues that the original Babylonian constellations (pre-MUL.APIN) were used and invented to serve as a cultural calendar. A whole lecture on how this is embedded in the Greco-Babylonian culture (1.5 hours) has been delivered in March by our group member.

For the scientific meeting in November 2023, the founder of the Working Group summarized the ideas, goals and developments.

South American Ethnoastronomy What are the methods, results, data that are collected?

The Working Group Star Names (WGSN) and the Stellarium team met in Jena from 1 to 3 November 2023 to think about ways of managing cultural data together. Astronomy is a science that works across faculties: Astrophysics has admittedly been one of the pioneering sciences for large databases and other repositories since the 1970s and…
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Talk by Dr. B. S. Shylaja

2022 Arthur and Hilda Winch Annual Lecture given by Duane Hamacher, PhD

Public Talk by Professor Duane Hamacher

On July 15, 2020, in a session of the Virtual Astronomy Club, Ian Ridpath spoke about the history of the constellations. A fascinating tale of how the figures, stories and names have been handed down through different societies to the familiar 88 that are officially recognised today. 

Dr. Danielle Adams

The Indian astronomer Ketkar had predicted Pluto (and another planet) much more precise than the American and European people who ran the survey programs. However, the discovery in America in 1930 was completely independent from this because his work was unknown in America.

Wie der Löwe an den Himmel kam (Franckh-Kosmos-Verlag 2021) Das neue Buch über die wahren Geschichten der Sternbilder.

Indigenous astronomy in Mer Associate Professor Duane Hamacher at University of Melbourne

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