Why most extrasolar planet names start with HD

Context: Undergrad
Thread starter adastra
Start date Jul 6, 2008
Tags

Exoplanets

Join the discussion

Registration is free. Ask a follow-up in this thread, or start your own.

2 replies · 6K views

adastra

Thread starter
Jul 6, 2008

Why most extrasolar planet names start with the letters HD

Discussion

Astronomy news on Phys.org

A dying star offers a rare glimpse of how the universe recycles its raw materials
Stellar stream beyond Milky Way offers new tool to map dark matter
Chemical fingerprints reveal hidden binary pasts of massive stars

LowlyPion

Homework Helper

Jul 6, 2008

I believe they are named for the stars that they orbit. HD is a common star name because it appears listed in the Henry Draper star catalog. Hence you see names like HD ####### followed by lowercase letter designating which planet out with "a" being the closest in planet.

This is my understanding anyway.

adastra

Jul 6, 2008

thank you

Why most extrasolar planet names start with HD

Discussion

High School A question on the geometry of black holes

Stargazing Astronomy: Orbit Terminology

High School Good drawing of Earth's orbit for model? Possibly vector file?

Undergrad Converting the Hubble constant to everyday speed units

Stargazing Meteor/meteorite made a big boom this morning!

High School Mysteries of Uranus; Need for further exploration

Undergrad Exoplanet, HD 137010 b and it's star, HD 137010

Graduate Larson-Sekanina Rotational Gradient Filter for comet 3i/Atlas

Undergrad Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients (LFBOTs)

Graduate Late time and early time approximation for EOS

Insights Revisiting the Velocity-Time Function

Insights Remote Operated Gate Control System

Insights AI Enriched Problem Solving

Insights Thinking Outside The Box Versus Knowing What’s In The Box

Insights Why Entangled Photon-Polarization Qubits Violate Bell’s Inequality

Insights Quantum Entanglement is a Kinematic Fact, not a Dynamical Effect

Why most extrasolar planet names start with HD

Discussion

Similar threads

Graduate Oxygen is not definitive evidence of life on habitable extrasolar planets

Graduate Finding an Extrasolar Planet's Radius

Graduate Looking for reading material on extrasolar planet detection

Graduate How Many Stars Can Detectable Wobbles Reveal Extrasolar Planets?

Undergrad Kepler's smallest rocky planet: 1.5 Earth radii, 4.5 Earth masses

Graduate Sudarsky's Extrasolar Planet Classification System

Undergrad Why Is the Search for Extrasolar Planets Crucial for Humanity?

Graduate Infrared observation methods and atmospheric characterization of extrasolar planets

Graduate Calculating heat received by extrasolar planets

High School Can I (amateur astronomer) detect extrasolar planets?