What is the sun at the centre of our solar system called? Is it just “The Sun.” I’ve seen a lot of reference to it as “Sol” but that seems to be only in science fiction novels. Is there any official name for the sun?
Sol = latin root.
Sun = English
Astronomers refer to it as the Sun.
Astronomers on Alpha Centauri call it “Ralph.” But they call alpha centauri “Edna,” so what do they know?
Hydrogen beings?
Yes, but very bright!
I’ve always been partial to Helios as the “Name” of the sun. I don’t care if it’s wrong. It just sounds better than “The Sun”
In any debate between Americans on constitutional law, it’s found unnecessary to specify that we’re talking about the Constitution of the United States, not the Canadian, Russian, or Burkino Fasan one. Our sun has the same sort of situation.
Since most astronomical names are derived from or constructed to be Latin (with the occasional Greek and Arabic interloper), it’s traditional to consider that our sun’s “name” is Sol (Latin for “sun”), our moon is Luna, and our own planet is Terra or Earth with a capital, using English for that one. Hence on a single-mooned hypothetical planet of Alpha Centuri A, one can refer to the place we came from as Terra, orbiting Sol and in turn orbited by Luna, as opposed to the world we are on, with its sun and moon.
Little hijack here-- what about the moon? we don’t even have a name for our own MOON!!!
Nah. Sun.
oh… polycarp already addressed that… I don’t buy that Luna is the moon’s name anymore than sol is the moons name. these are just another languages word for the same thing.
I am an astronomer (and in the solar physics department, no less) and I’ve never heard any of my colleagues us the name Sol. The name of our sun is the Sun. Similarly the name of our galaxy is the Galaxy, or sometimes our Galaxy, and the moon is the Moon.
Ummm, isn’t our galaxy called the Milky Way?
SIMBAD is a database of astronomical objects. It keeps track of all sorts of names. For some objects you can get a list of 20 different names. A SIMBAD query on “sun” didn’t return anything. And I can’t exactly enter its coordinates. So, I’m no help.
:dubious:
I think we should come up with a new name for the sun and moon. After all, we dont go around calling Earth “Planet”
Ryan, you know you’re really just calling it “the sun” or “sol” in another language, right? It’s not really any more or less of a proper name than those.
The Milky Way is just a nickname for our galaxy, I think, and it’s not the only one (it’s from the English language; other cultures have other names for it).
I thought the International Star Registry had already sold the naming rights for our sun to a guy in Indiana ?
See Cecil’s Classic:
Nah, it isn’t a big deal. Astronomers refer to other suns as stars, and other moons as satellites (or natural satellites) so there isn’t much chance of confusion. Capitalization also removes the ambiguity.
We call the Earth “the world,” don’t we? World is a general term like sun, moon, etc., and I’ve never seen anybody get terribly confused by it.
I call the sun (sic) Ed. Me and Ed go way back.
I had this big idea once that I would start a contest for naming the moon–put it on the Web or something. Anyway, whatever name got the most votes would become the official name of the moon. Could anyone say that it wasn’t? ( I don’t mean that rhetorically-- I’m really curious as to how all that works.) I checked online and found a site called www.namethemoon.com it’s not there anymore, but there was a page there once concerning this subject put up by some religious group.