The Large Magellanic Cloud (center) and Small Magellanic Cloud (right) can be seen with the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere, as shown in this photo from Paranal Observatory in Chile.
Y. BELETSKY/LCO, ESO
Posted on 10/02/2023 8:50:28 AM PDT by Red Badger
Names have significance, especially when they’re written in the stars.
A group of astronomers is coalescing around an idea to rename two neighbors of the Milky Way, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.
Named after explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the satellite galaxies are visible with the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere. But Magellan’s name is not fitting, astronomer Mia de los Reyes and colleagues argue. The leader of the first expedition to successfully circle the globe, Magellan enslaved and killed Indigenous people encountered on the voyage, which set out from Spain in 1519 (SN: 9/17/19).
“Because we’re naming things in the night sky, which belongs to everyone, we think that it’s important to have names that reflect all of humanity,” says de los Reyes, of Amherst College in Massachusetts. She calls for the name change in an opinion piece published September 12 in Physics. Magellan’s voyage helped pave the way for Spanish colonialism in South America, Guam and the Philippines, says de los Reyes, who is Filipino American. “Many people see Magellan as a villain in the Philippines.”
The Magellanic clouds loom large in the field of astronomy. They’re independent galaxies, but close enough that astronomers can observe the individual stars within (SN: 4/1/22). “The Magellanic Clouds are this amazing laboratory for seeing things up close and personal,” says astronomer Sally Oey of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, a supporter of the name change.
Magellan wasn’t an astronomer. The clouds were noted by a member of his expedition, but they were already well-known to many cultures in the Southern Hemisphere, and even to previous European explorers. “It doesn’t make sense to have them named after any one person, let alone a person who never actually studied them,” says astronomer Gurtina Besla of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
The Large Magellanic Cloud (center) and Small Magellanic Cloud (right) can be seen with the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere, as shown in this photo from Paranal Observatory in Chile.
Y. BELETSKY/LCO, ESO
Ridiculous Ping!...................
[[But Magellan’s name is not fitting, astronomer Mia de los Reyes and colleagues argue.]]
Wow are they lame!
they’ll do anything to disparage whites and white history
TH\hey need to give it up already.
They are trying so desperately to erase ALL of our culture and history.
Another tiny prick still hung up on the slavery BS. He needs to pay “reparations” to some black guy instead of accepting a paycheck for himself.
Name it, "God's business, not ours, nebula"
OK Mia. Let’s call it the Fidel Castro cloud, shall we?
Get them the hell out of our science system. Tell them that the world is flat and that they should shut up.
Hmmm could there be an Obama constellation on the horizon?
They succumb to large piles of money and threats from the leftists (job loss, personal attacks, etc.) just like most everyone else.
How many people did HER OWN ANCESTORS ENSLAVE AND MURDER?..................
And Pluto isn’t a planet.
What about “man” and “woman” ?
And what about “up” and “down” ?
“Day” and “night” ?
Aren’t all those words traceable in their origins to some sort of slave trading or other oppressive behavior?
A friggin’ crybaby Filipino. What the hell is he doing in 72% white America? The boy needs to go the hell home and whine to the Filipinos about slavery. Americans are getting tired of hearing it. None of us had any part in that bullsh*t. If you read any of the new “history” books slavery is a myth anyway. There is no way they could have been building America, inventing everything, putting man on the moon and working in the U.S. Congress if they were picking cotton.
It is long past time to tell these self hating bastards to go and **** themselves.
We endured Bataan and Corregidor, for this?
India.
I like DeSoto. He discovered the Mississippi and started a car company.
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