Sky and Telescope - April 2016 - 14

News Notes

SPACE & SOCIETY I IAU
Names Stars and Planets
Although it's the only recognized authority for naming stars, the International
Astronomical Union has never bestowed
a common name on a star. In December,
however, following a wildly popular public
contest, the IAU announced names for 14
stars and 31 planets that orbit them. For
full details see http://is.gd/IAUnames.
■ J. KELLY BEATTY
Star
Designation

Star
Name

Planet Name
(Designation)

14 Andromedae

Veritate*

Spe* (b)

18 Delphini

Musica

Arion (b)

42 Draconis

Fafnir

Orbitar (b)

47 Ursae Majoris

Chalawan

Taphao Thong
(b)
Taphao Kaew
(c)

51 Pegasi

Helvetios

Dimidium (b)

55 Cancri

Copernicus

Galileo (b)
Brahe (c)
Lipperhey (d)
Janssen (e)
Harriot ( f )

Epsilon (ε) Tauri

Ain

Amateru* (b)

Epsilon (ε) Eridani Ran*

AEgir* (b)

Gamma (γ) Cephei Errai

Tadmor* (b)

Alpha (α) Piscis
Austrini

Fomalhaut

Dagon (b)

HD 104985

Tonatiuh

Meztli (b)

HD 149026

Ogma*

Smertrios (b)

HD 81688

Intercrus

Arkas (b)

Mu (μ) Arae

Cervantes

Quijote (b)
Dulcinea (c)
Rocinante (d)
Sancho (e)

Beta (β)
Geminorum

Pollux

Thestias* (b)

PSR 1257+12

Lich

Draugr (b)
Poltergeist (c)
Phobetor (d)

Upsilon (υ)
Andromedae

Titawin

Saﬀar (b)
Samh (c)
Majriti (d)

Xi (ξ) Aquilae

Libertas*

Fortitudo* (b)

Iota (ι) Draconis

Edasich

Hypatia (b)

* These names are modiﬁed from the original
proposals to be consistent with IAU rules.
Preexisting, common star names are in bold.

14

April 2016 sky & telescope

MILKY WAY I Charting 70,000 Stars' Ages
Astronomers have mapped the ages
of 70,000 red giant stars spanning our
galaxy, ushering in a new era of galactic
archaeology. Melissa Ness (Max Planck
Institute for Astronomy, Germany)
announced the new stellar catalog January 8th at the American Astronomical
Society meeting in Kissimmee, Florida.
A fairly direct age measurement
comes from starquakes, which create
pulsations in brightness that change as
the star ages. But such data is only available for a limited number of stars in the
Kepler spacecraft's ﬁeld of view, and the
team wanted to date tens of thousands of
stars using their compositions, determined by the APO Galactic Evolution
Experiment (APOGEE) survey.
As stars like the Sun evolve into red
giants, the roiling plasma of their outer
convective layer extends its reach down to
scrape the stellar core, dredging up justfused elements and carrying them to the

surface. Surface contamination reveals
how long the red giant has been around.
So the team picked 1,475 stars
observed by both Kepler and APOGEE. They then used them to "teach"
a computer to look for a more indirect
measure of age: stars' chemical footprints. Once the algorithm "learned"
this chemical footprint from Kepler
stars with known ages, the researchers
set it loose on all the stars.
The results so far conﬁrm that our
galaxy's spiral disk formed from the
inside out. The youngest red giants
assemble along the galactic plane,
encased by older stars. Farther from the
galaxy's center, this younger "backbone"
ﬂares outward, away from the plane.
These patterns are the hallmark of a
disk that started small and grew slowly
outward, like pancake batter ﬁrst ladled
onto the center then added to the edges.
■ MONICA YOUNG

SPACE & SOCIETY I NASA's Budget Boost
In December, Congress and President
Obama approved funding for NASA to
the tune of $19.3 billion for ﬁscal year
2016. That's almost $1.3 billion more
than the agency received in FY2015 and
$750 million above what it requested.
NASA's funding peaked at nearly
4.5% of the total federal budget in the
Apollo era of the late 1960s. It dropped to
1% by the mid-1970s. Even with this latest increase, the current allocation is still
less than 0.5% of the requested $3.999
trillion federal spending budget.
Nevertheless, "the best thing about
this budget is that basically everything
won," says Casey Drier (The Planetary
Society). "But in terms of pure funding
increases, the Space Launch System and
the Planetary Science Division received
some of the biggest increases."
The SLS is the next generation of
heavy-lift rockets to take astronauts
beyond low orbit to a near-Earth asteroid
and eventually to Mars in the 2030s.
SLS will receive $2 billion in FY2016.
The ﬁrst full-up SLS test might come in

November 2018, and the ﬁrst launch of a
crewed Orion capsule as early as 2021.
Meanwhile, the continuation of
International Space Station operations
will receive more than $5 billion -
more than $1 billion above what NASA
requested - and includes absorbing
the commercial initiative for Boeing
and SpaceX to develop crewed transport
(which had been managed by NASA's
exploration division).
But the most exciting prospects in
the FY2016 budget come in planetary
exploration. This division will receive
more than $1.6 billion, about a quarter
billion more than asked for. This boost
will enable missions such as the Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter and the current
Mars rovers Opportunity and Curiosity
to stay in operation. The development of
a new Mars rover and a Europa mission,
both set for the early 2020s, will also
remain on track. In fact, the funding bill
speciﬁcally requires the development of
a Europa lander. ✦
■ DAVID DICKINSON
http://www.is.gd/IAUnames
Sky and Telescope - April 2016

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