So if you saw a comet, something bad was going to happen. But for most of that time, many believed comets to be messages from the gods, harbingers or oracles of disaster and bad news.įLATOW: Wow. And he was a very powerful scientist, so that held ground for almost until the 18th century. He said they are not stars at all but merely dry and warm exhalations from the Earth's lower atmosphere. MARKEL: About a century later, Aristotle demoted comets. MARKEL: And that perfectly describes a wandering, bright, starry head followed by that long trail of misty hair-like light that we've all seen if we have been lucky enough to witness a comet. They derived it from the Greek word for a head with long hair. But around 500 B.C., some Greek natural philosophers named the word. MARKEL: Well, they were cited long before they were named, probably as early as 1000 B.C. MARKEL: Here too with the Great Lakes.įLATOW: Yeah. MARKEL: Well, look up in the sky, you might see one, Ira. Professor HOWARD MARKEL (University of Michigan): Hi, Ira. And Howard Markel, professor of the history of medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, he's also a director of the Center for the History of Medicine there - welcome. This is our monthly feature where it - we come up with the origin of a word. With these 26 magic symbols, however, millions of words are written every day.Īnd that music means it's time for Science Diction. Unlike planets or stars, comets can be named after the person that discovered which is why you will see more regular names instead of names with a mythological or natural origin.Unidentified Man: The alphabet has only 26 letters. We have not included comets that do not have a proper name which are mostly of the X (no meaningful orbit) classification. We have grouped together the comets that share the same name, but you can see the individual designations in the right column. You will find the (almost) complete list of comet names below. So a name like C/2007 H2 really just means: The second non-periodic comet discovered in the second half of June, 2007.

If it was the first comet discovered in that half month, it receives a 1, if it was the second it receives a 2, etc. The final number simply means the order in which it was discovered in that period.

So, the first half of January is A, the second half of January is B, the first half of February is C, and so on. It goes from A-H or J-Y, the first block for the first half of the year, the latter for the second half.Įach block contains 12 letters and they are given in half months. The next letter of the name refers to the month it was discovered. Next, the name contains the year of discovery, so a non-periodic comet discovered in 1995 would be C/1995. The first letter refers to the comet’s type, given by the next table: PĪ periodic comet that has been lost, broken up, or disappearedĪn object previously identified as a comet that is now classified as a minor planet Let’s split up the names and see how each part is given. The current naming convention used by the International Astronomical Union includes comet names that look like: So the “true” name for a comet is its scientific designation. Because modern astronomers started discovering so many comets thanks to new technologies, this system became confusing because multiple comets could end up having the same name as you will see in the table below. This name is given by its discoverer or the observatory that spotted it first.

This is because there are multiple naming systems that have changed over the years.įirst, there is the “proper” name. They are great sources of inspiration when you are trying to find the perfect name for a baby, a pet, or a character in your novel. Comets, planets, stars, and moons are famous for having really cool names inspired by mythology, art, nature, etc.

Comet names