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Old 12-13-2017, 09:28 PM
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blackshire blackshire is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tbzep
Oumuamua...what a name! Next one to come through should be called Mahna Mahna!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5W60VwDkas
Thank you for posting this video--I'd forgotten about them! There are other, hardly less unusual, naming traditions for various types of celestial bodies. :-) With classical Greco-Roman names being pretty "mined out" (Chiron-type "ice-teroids" are named after centaurs, asteroids were named after goddesses and nymphs [and later, gods, universities, pets, astronomers' girlfriends, etc.]), "Sesame Street" represents a fresh "vein" of names for interstellar asteroids and comets. (The fact that such objects will likely never be seen again or visited, unless there are great space propulsion advances, also makes giving them whimsical names less problematic [astronomers could stick with their official, alphanumeric designations], and the unofficial names given to lunar features for Apollo provide a precedent of sorts.) For example:

As well as Mahna Mahna (which would continue the repeating-syllables format of Oumuamua), future "I-class" asteroids and comets could be given names such as Count von Count and Maughty-moot-mope. Binary I-class objects could be given names that cover *both* components. Thus, we may one day discover interstellar interlopers that leave the Sol system with monikers such as Bert & Ernie, Buddy & Jim (two ^human^ comedians who appeared on "Sesame Street" during its early years), and Geeful & Gonk (these last two resided on an extra-solar planet called Snu [pronounced "snoo"], so they have an intrinsic interstellar association...).
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