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Ashley
Lv 4
Ashley asked in Science & MathematicsAstronomy & Space · 4 years ago

Who do astronomers decide the names of planets?

By which I mean the placeholder number letter combination names?

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  • ?
    Lv 6
    4 years ago

    who's the joker that came up with uranus?

  • Morningfox
    Lv 7
    4 years ago

    Do you mean like Kepler-12b? Kepler-12 is the name of the star. The letters are "a" for the star (not used very much), then "b", "c", etc in order of discovery. The letters are decided by the discoverers; some of them use (or used to use) different naming systems. There still discussion among astronomers about how to name planets in multiple-star systems.

    Source(s): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet_naming_con...
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