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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There are millions of things that we see in the night sky, we can’t give them all normal-sounding names, so we set a standard naming convention based on it’s discovery
The first set (VVVGC1-B) refers to the survey that discovered it. Here, the VVV survey, **G**eneral **C**atalog 1B was what recorded it
The second part refers to it’s sky location. J denotes the coordinate system (called J2000) and the numbers represent the center of the object in that coordinate system (right ascension of 18°14’35”, declination -38°14’32”)
So, using this naming convention, we not only have a pretty much unique naming system for anything we find, but also it tells some basic information about it as well
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