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Teaching Star Names
With kind permission herewith we share a letter from two Italian primary school teachers: Dear friends at WGSN I am pleased to inform you that over the past few weeks, with the help of a colleague of mine, I have carried out for a group of about twenty elementary school students from the I.C. Via Carotenuto…
Releases in 2026
A list of new star names released, a new work mode, and some technical issues fixed this year so far.
IAU issued an Announcement about WGSN
On February 12, 2026, the IAU issued an announcement on the recent activities of WGSN. During the past two years, with a new work mode WGSN adopted 59 new star names: IAU Selects New Star Names to Reflect Global Astronomical Culture “These names span the entire celestial sphere, with a deliberate cultural emphasis on Asia,…
Names Released 2025
A few highlights of 2025: we released exactly 40 new star names and created info cards for them which were posted on our social media channels. The above lists show a random selection. of names with the images of them produced for the public. The distribution of the names we adopted from January to November…
Blaze Star
A long discussion in WGSN was caused by the question whether the IAU should adopt names that are used in modern astrophysics. In case of the eruptive star T CrB, for instance, it isn’t necessary because the designator (variable star nomenclature with capital letter and constellation abbreviation) is already short and practical for use in…
Ten new star names
WGSN adopts names
Four Chinese star names applied
WGSN adopts names
Letter from a reader
Some nice words 🙂
New Star Names 2024
WGSN adopts names
Babylonian Cultural Astronomy
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.
WGSN explained by Eric Mamajek
For the scientific meeting in November 2023, the founder of the Working Group summarized the ideas, goals and developments.
WGSN meets Stellarium
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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