Question for astronomy geeks: named stars in nebulae?

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Question for any astronomy geeks here: can anybody think of a named star, i.e., one that has more than just a catalog designation, that is (at least as seen from Earth) in the middle of a nebula?

It doesn't have to be immersed in the nebula (although that would be even better).

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Question for any astronomy geeks here: can anybody think of a named star, i.e., one that has more than just a catalog designation, that is (at least as seen from Earth) in the middle of a nebula?

It doesn't have to be immersed in the nebula (although that would be even better).

Eta Carinae, 7,500 ly away in the Homunculus Nebula, part of the Carina Nebula. Also known as Foramen, Tiānshè (Tseen she or "Heaven's Altar"), Hǎi shān èr ("Second Star of Sea and Mountain"), 231 G Carinae, HR 4210, HD 93308, CD−59°2620, IRAS 10431-5925, GC 14799 and AAVSO 1041–59, according to Wikipedia.

The stars of the Pleiades, 444 ly distant, are named Alcyone, Atlas, Electra, Maia, Merope, Taygeta, Pleione, Celaeno, and Asterope or Sterope. Nine names even though the cluster is sometimes called the Seven Sisters. The stars are associated with a reflection nebula.

The stars of the Trapezium associated with the Orion Nebula don't have Arabic or Chinese names individually, as far as I'm aware.

Of course, real nebulae are much less dense than shown in TV series. A typical nebula might have a density of one hundred million to ten billion particles per cubic metre (ppcm), compared to one million ppcm in the galactic medium or five to ten million ppcm in the Solar Wind at 1 AU. The Earth's atmosphere at sea level has a density of about 2.7x10^25 ppcm or 27 septillion (short scale) ppcm.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Hmm. Foramen. That has possibilities, although I wonder how a star got a name that means a hole in a bone.

Taygeta. That's the system where most of the action in The Tears of the Singers takes place.

We have a convention where I work of astronomical names for servers. When we started the convention, many years ago, we called a new, but rather underpowered box "Pluto," because it was turning out to be a bit of a dog. We called the oldest one still in service "Saturn," as an allusion to Holst ("Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age"). Another one that was rather large in size, and the biggest we'd ever had in capacity, was dubbed "Jupiter." Then we got one that was more compact, but the fastest we'd ever had, and called it "Mercury." Others were dubbed "Neptune" and "Venus" (the latter because it runs hot enough to have a very noisy cooling fan); at one point, we acquired a very large, 2-cabinet server, as barter, which we dubbed "Sirius," because it was big, too big for a planet, and its two cabinets suggested a binary star. I vaguely recall that we also had one for a short time that was dubbed "Uranus" (with the pronunciation that astronomers tend to frown on) as a pun on the fact that it was a pain in the butt.

And since the terminal emulator we use to communicate with these boxes can take a background image (very useful when you have half a dozen of them open on your desktop), I use background images of their namesake bodies.

At any rate, we now have a cloud server that needs a name. So a star in a nebula seems appropriate.

Any further thoughts?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Hmm. Foramen. That has possibilities, although I wonder how a star got a name that means a hole in a bone.

Taygeta. That's the system where most of the action in The Tears of the Singers takes place.

We have a convention where I work of astronomical names for servers. When we started the convention, many years ago, we called a new, but rather underpowered box "Pluto," because it was turning out to be a bit of a dog. We called the oldest one still in service "Saturn," as an allusion to Holst ("Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age"). Another one that was rather large in size, and the biggest we'd ever had in capacity, was dubbed "Jupiter." Then we got one that was more compact, but the fastest we'd ever had, and called it "Mercury." Others were dubbed "Neptune" and "Venus" (the latter because it runs hot enough to have a very noisy cooling fan); at one point, we acquired a very large, 2-cabinet server, as barter, which we dubbed "Sirius," because it was big, too big for a planet, and its two cabinets suggested a binary star. I vaguely recall that we also had one for a short time that was dubbed "Uranus" (with the pronunciation that astronomers tend to frown on) as a pun on the fact that it was a pain in the butt.

And since the terminal emulator we use to communicate with these boxes can take a background image (very useful when you have half a dozen of them open on your desktop), I use background images of their namesake bodies.

At any rate, we now have a cloud server that needs a name. So a star in a nebula seems appropriate.

Any further thoughts?

I believe "Foramen" is one of several Chinese names for the star. I don't think it relates to the term "foramen", which is derived from the Latin verb "forare" meaning to bore or to pierce.

Our solar system is actually embedded in nebulosity sometimes referred to as the "local fluff" or local interstellar cloud - part of the local bubble, probably the result of supernova explosions between ten and twenty million years ago in a subgroup of the Pleiades cluster.

So, how about "fluffy" or is that name too twee?

I don't know of any star with an Arabic or Greek-derived name that is associated with a nebula.

I used to work for a company that had a server called "megami", which is Japanese for "goddess". The Japanese for "cloud" is "kumo" and "nebula" is "seiun". In Latin, other words for cloud are "nubes" and "nubecula" and another word for mist besides "nebula" is "caligo". The Arabic words for cloud and mist are "sahaba" and "dabab". The ancient Greek words for cloud and mist are "nephos" and "omichle".

Perhaps just go with a nebula with an interesting name. I quite like the name of the Dark Doodad Nebula in the constellation of Musca (the Fly). A doodad is just another word for a thingumajig.

10 Most Spectacular Nebulae in the Universe - (astronomytrek.com)

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

We settled on Alcyone, since (as was pointed out in the very first response here, and a response to the same query on Fountain Pen Network) the Pleiades are more-or-less immersed in a reflection nebula The rest of the Pleiades (including Pleione and Atlas), along with Foramen, give us 9 more names, if we need any more for cloud IBM Midrange boxes.

 

[Christopher]

I believe "Foramen" is one of several Chinese names for the star.

No way is "Foramen" a Chinese word, unless it's a Western distortion of one. But I can't find any indication of that; nothing has an etymology for it, except one site that says "Origin unknown." It's just that the various reference sites online tend to lump it together with Tianshe as its "traditional names," some with phrasing like "Also known as Foramen and Tianshe (meaning "heaven's altar" in Chinese)," which is sloppily enough written to give the impression that both names are Chinese.

My guess is that it's from the Latin word for an aperture. Apparently the ancients considered it to be the lantern on the bow of Argo Navis, so maybe it's a reference to the aperture that the light of the lantern shines through.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yeah, I doubt it's Chinese in origin. More likely Latin as you state, except that I doubt it's of ancient origin - more likely from no earlier than 1677 when the southern sky was being catalogued by Edmund Halley. The Romans never got far enough south; I don't think.

NASA - Eta Carinae

 

[publiusr]

The cone nebula is a zone of star formation:
https://www.space.com/cone-nebula-star-formation-vlt-image

—or maybe an Outer God, from the look of that picture…I thought the Avengers beat the Celestial…

 

[Christopher]

The cone nebula is a zone of star formation:

No doubt the result of consuming mass quantities...

 

[publiusr]

Some exoplanet favorites:
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/alien-w...nets&utm_campaign=NASASocial&linkId=195271448

I nominate the Trappist system to be the retcon home of all the backwater planets of TOS…you really could visit each one in a week!

MOND reborn
https://phys.org/news/2022-12-galaxy-rotation-gravity-explanation-dark.html

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

No way is "Foramen" a Chinese word, unless it's a Western distortion of one.

I think I might have been fooled into believing it was a Wade-Giles or Pinyin rendering of a Chinese word similar to "Tianmen", which means "Heaven's Gate". I believe "for" means "good fortune" and "men" means "gate" or "door", but this is way out of my realm of knowledge. I know fewer than thirty Pinyin word renderings of Mandarin Chinese words and none of the appropriate diacritics or how to pronounce those - so, effectively, I know none. I was aware that "foramen" is a Latin term used in English from its medical usage to describe the hole in a bone that allows the passage of nerves and blood vessels. Of course, as you state, in this context it probably refers to an imagined hole in a depiction of the now-defunct constellation of Argo Navis that allows the passage of an anchor rope, dock line, warp or similar.