Rename the Magellanic Clouds?
The controversy about renaming the Magellanic Clouds is heating up once more. It’s been brewing for not less than a few years. On September 12, 2023, astronomer Mia de los Reyes of Amherst School wrote in an opinion piece within the American Bodily Society’s on-line journal Physics:
The Milky Way is surrounded by a bunch of smaller satellite galaxies. The 2 brightest are often called the Giant and Small Magellanic Clouds. Each galaxies are seen to the unaided eye, and each have been recognized for hundreds of years by viewers of the Southern Hemisphere sky.
However the fantastic thing about these starry objects is clouded by their names, which honor a person who was a colonizer, a slaver, and a assassin. Now I and a coalition of astronomers are calling for the scientific group to rename these galaxies …
These two well-known Milky Way satellites are named for the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who led the primary expedition to circumnavigate the globe.
Why rename the galaxies?
Based on Mia de los Reyes and her colleagues, on Magellan’s travels, he killed and enslaved the native peoples he met. De los Reyes wrote:
… Magellan was no astronomer, and he was not the primary to doc these galaxies. Indigenous peoples throughout the Southern Hemisphere have names and legends for these programs that predate Magellan by hundreds of years.
A number of the earlier names and descriptions for the satellite galaxies are lovely and descriptive. De los Reyes wrote:
… the Mapuche of modern-day Chile and Argentina name them Rvganko, or water ponds, which they suppose are within the means of drying out. The Kamilaroi of modern-day Australia regard the galaxies as locations the place folks go after dying. And the Arimi of modern-day Tanzania see the clouds as a person and a girl who assist the Pleiades carry heavy rains in the course of the wet season.
Read the September 12, 2023, opinion piece by Mia de los Reyes here.
What do you suppose? Share your opinion within the feedback under.
Extra from Mia de los Reyes
Moreover, she wrote:
… Magellan dedicated horrific acts. A primary-hand account of Magellan’s expedition describes how, in what’s now often called Argentina, Magellan enslaved the native Tehuelche folks. He positioned iron manacles on the ‘youngest and greatest proportioned’ males, telling them that the manacles have been presents. In what turned Guam and the Philippines, Magellan and his males burned villages and killed their inhabitants.
Regardless of his actions, Magellan has been – and continues to be – broadly honored by the sphere of astronomy. Magellan’s identify at present seems in over 17,000 peer-reviewed educational articles. His identify is hooked up to astronomical objects corresponding to a lunar crater and a Martian crater, each of that are named Magalhaens; the NASA Magellan spacecraft; the dual 6.5-m Magellan telescopes; and most just lately, an beneath development, next-generation extraordinarily giant telescope known as the Large Magellan Telescope. The Magellan telescopes are all situated in Chile, a rustic with a historical past of violent Spanish conquest. Certainly, Magellan’s ‘discovery’ of the Strait of Magellan allowed Spanish conquistadors to discover Chile’s coast and led to genocidal campaigns in opposition to the native Mapuche folks.
I and lots of different astronomers consider that astronomical objects and services shouldn’t be named after Magellan, or after anybody else with a violent colonialist legacy. We want the Worldwide Astronomical Union – the physique accountable for naming astronomical objects – to rename the Magellanic Clouds. We hope different astronomical establishments, significantly the consortia that handle the 6.5-m Magellan telescopes and the upcoming Large Magellan Telescope, can even revisit the usage of Magellan’s identify.
Read the September 12, 2023, opinion piece by Mia de los Reyes here.
What do you suppose? Share your opinion within the feedback under.
What would we name them?
Writing in Science Information on September 26, 2023, senior physics author Emily Conover defined:
The galaxies have been recognized scientifically by Magellan’s identify since solely the tip of the nineteenth century, nicely after Magellan’s voyage. That’s only a blip within the historical past of astronomy, the researchers argue.
Greater than 100 astronomers have expressed curiosity within the marketing campaign, anchored by a core group of about 50, de los Reyes says. The group goals to carry the proposal to the Worldwide Astronomical Union, in hopes of finally holding a vote on the identify change …
The astronomers are actually making an attempt out new names. One in style suggestion is to name them the ‘Milky Clouds.’ That may keep the generally used acronyms, LMC and SMC.
And, Conover wrote, it will replicate the galaxies’ connection to one thing a lot larger than anybody individual: our dwelling galaxy, the Milky Way.
Read the September 26, 2023, reporting by Emily Conover in Science Information, right here.
What do you suppose? Share your opinion within the feedback under.
The Magellanic Clouds from the Southern Hemisphere
If you wish to see the Magellanic Clouds, it’s a must to head south. They’re not seen north of about 17 degrees north latitude. For those who’re within the Southern Hemisphere, you possibly can see these satellite galaxies any evening of the yr as a result of they’re south circumpolar. In different phrases, they’re shut sufficient to the South Celestial Pole that they by no means set.
The Giant Magellanic Cloud is without doubt one of the closest galaxies to us at about 160,000 light-years away. It’s about 40,000 light-years nearer than the Small Magellanic Cloud. As a few of the closest galaxies to our dwelling galaxy, they stand out as massive, misty blobs of sunshine beneath darkish skies.
Scientists estimate the Small Magellanic Cloud incorporates round 3 billion stars, whereas the Giant Magellanic Cloud homes some 30 billion stars.
The Clouds in fable
Within the Southern Hemisphere, Australian Aborigines, the Maori folks of New Zealand and the Polynesian folks of the South Pacific have been aware of each the Giant and Small Clouds. They used them as navigational markers throughout their oceanic expeditions. They thought-about these hazy star-clouds predictors of the winds. The web site OzSky.org explains:
Many tribes of Australian Aboriginals have ‘dreamtime tales,’ which they’ve handed down from technology to technology, to clarify the universe as they understand it. One such legend describes the Clouds because the campfires of an outdated couple, the Jukara. The Jukara relied on different star folks to produce them with fish and lily bulbs caught within the Milky Way to outlive. The outdated couple cooked the meals over their campfire, which was the star Achernar. The Giant Cloud represented the outdated man whereas the Small Cloud was the outdated girl.
One other fable comes from South Africa. The close by constellation Mensa the Desk bought its identify from South Africa’s Desk Mountain. One story says that the Giant Magellanic Cloud is a puff of smoke from a pipe-smoking contest held on the mountain.
In historical past, Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi, a Persian astronomer, described the Giant Magellanic Cloud in his Ebook of Fastened Stars in 964 CE. He known as it Al Bakr, describing it because the White Ox of southern Arabia.
Science of the Magellanic Clouds
Henrietta Swan Leavitt – well-known for her work on the Cepheid variable stars – studied the Giant and Small Magellanic Clouds from Harvard School Observatory in Southern Peru. Within the early 1900s, she printed her work on variable stars within the Small Magellanic Cloud, famously displaying the connection between the durations (cycles) of the celebs’ variability and their luminosities. Her examine was titled 1777 variables within the Magellanic Clouds. The period-luminosity relationship later turned a dependable gauge for astronomers making an attempt to parse the riddle of star and galaxy distances.
Astronomers consider that the Giant and Small Clouds fashioned across the similar time as our Milky Way, some 12 to 13 billion years in the past. As a result of their repeated interplay with our bigger Milky Way galaxy, it’s thought that nice galactic tides might need triggered their irregular form.
The continuing Dark Energy Survey discovered a darkish stream of interacting matter between the Giant and Small Magellanic Clouds. Simulations carried out by a group of scientists on the College of Arizona urged that the 2 galaxies could be interacting with one another and would possibly finally merge.
Backside line: The Giant and Small Magellanic Clouds are two of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way. They are often seen with out optical support from southern skies. In September 2023, astronomers once more started calling for the clouds to be renamed.
