Why are stars and planets named with weird combinations of letters and numbers?

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I was reading this article (https://www.vice.com/en/article/z34883/scie-discover-huge-extragalactic-structure-in-zone-of-avoidance) and it talks about how a new galaxy cluster is named “VVVGCl-B J181435-381432”

Does naming a galaxy cluster like this really help people in this field of study know what it is they’re talking about?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

The most prominent visible ones identified early in history are Messier Objects, M1 into M100s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_object beyond these are millions of other objects further cataloged by more complicated reference number systems. Some highlights:

M1 is the crab nebula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_Nebula

M31 is the Andromeda Galaxy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy

M45 is Pleiades/Subaru https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades

And so on

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