Sargas is a modern star name adopted by the International Astronomical Union in the IAU-Catalog of Star Names (IAU-CSN). Its origin is Sumerian (from ŠAR₂.GAZ). It is the name of HIP86228 (θ Sco, HR 6553) in constellation Sco.

Etymology and History

MUL.SHAR.GAZ, "mul" is the Sumerian designator for stars and constellations, "Shargaz" and "Sharur" are two weapons of Marduk (the city god of Babylon and highest god of the Babylonian pantheon after 1250 BCE). The line I ii 31-32 in MUL.APIN read: "Two stars which stand in the sting of the Scorpion: Sharur and Shargaz", so these star names have originally been given to the stars lambda and upsilon Sco. The Mesopotamian name "Sargas" was linked to the star Theta Sco by Robert Brown Jr. (1893; "Euphratean Stellar Researches Part II.") and its subsequent mention in R. H. Allen's (1899) "Star-names and Their Meanings" popularized its subsequent use.

Mythology

IAU Working Group on Star Names

The name was adopted by the IAU WGSN on 2016/08/21.

Weblinks

• Website of the IAU WGSN: https://exopla.net/

Reference

• References (general)
• MUL.APIN I ii 31-32 (Hunger+Steele (2019)), Horowitz, W. (2018) ‘Communication and miscommunication in the southern sky’, in Registers and Modes of Communication in the Ancient Near East. 1st edn. Routledge, pp. 69–84.