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The adjectival forms of the names of astronomical bodies are not always easily predictable. Attested adjectival forms of the larger bodies are listed below, along with the two small Martian moons; in some cases they are accompanied by their demonymic equivalents, which denote hypothetical inhabitants of these bodies.
The Maya considered Venus to be the most important celestial body after the Sun and Moon. They called it Chac ek, [280] or Noh Ek', "the Great Star". [281] The cycles of Venus were important to their calendar and were described in some of their books such as Maya Codex of Mexico and Dresden Codex.
The origins of the planetary symbols can be found in the attributes given to classical deities. The Roman planisphere of Bianchini (2nd century, currently in the Louvre, inv. Ma 540) [2] shows the seven planets represented by portraits of the seven corresponding gods, each a bust with a halo and an iconic object or dress, as follows: Mercury has a caduceus and a winged cap; Venus has a ...
Older catalogues either assigned an arbitrary number to each object, or used a simple systematic naming scheme based on the constellation the star lies in, like the older Ptolemy's Almagest in Greek from 150 and Al-Sufi's Book of Fixed Stars in Arabic from 964. The variety of sky catalogues now in use means that most bright stars currently have ...
In 2016, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) [2] to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN's first bulletin, dated July 2016, [3] included a table of 125 stars comprising the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN (on 30 June and 20 July 2016) together with names of stars adopted by the IAU Executive Committee ...
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Lists of astronomical phenomena published by almanacs sometimes included conjunctions of stars and planets or the Moon; rather than print the full name of the star, a Greek letter and the symbol for the constellation of the star was sometimes used instead.
While Venus and the crescent moon will be closest on December 4, ... In 2020, Jupiter and Saturn were so close together they looked like one beautiful star, appearing just days before Christmas.