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Aint' there an agency that gives names to stars? or was it just planet. Yeah youor right the current naming system should be changed as having such a long numerical name is very hard to remember.

Maybe have some type of public naming system where the public gives names and chooses which stars recieve that name and some government agency(NASA?) just approves the names.

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English is not the only language

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Sadly it's just not realistic to give proper names to every star that's discovered or catalogued, there are far too many.

I have to say that I can't ever recall seeing a star with a name quite as long as HDE394-8110048-14818943108. Most are named by a catalogue identifier, usually 2 or more letters, followed by either a catalogue number (eg LHS 375) or the stars' coordinates (eg PG 0918 -0023). These make it easy for the star to be identified and, more importantly, looked up in a catalogue.

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The letters refer to the catalogue they are described in; most nearby stars are described in several catalogues, which makes cross-referencing them tricky. Some of the most distant stars with known planets have OGLE catalogue numbers, as they were discovered by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment which examined several distant stars. Others are pulsar planets, detected by irregularities in the rapid emissions of pulsar; these have the designation PSR.

All the other stars with planets have several catalog names; the late John Whatmough of the Extrasolar Visions website prefered to use the HD (Henry Draper) catalog numbers for stars without Bayer designations. That catalogue is useful for reasonably nearby stars, but doesn't include many of the smallest dwarfs.

Only two extrasolar planets AFAIK have generally accepted nicknames,
Bellerophon (51 Pegasi b)
and Osiris (HD 209458 b)
but I expect this will change over time.

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The problem with naming just too many stars. Naming each one with an individual name wont' work. Maybe just the important ones for their uniqueness??

But having such a catalog systems with such long names, HDE394-......, is pretty hard to remember them. Even I think for astronomers themselves. Maybe a new catalog system is in need of?, as many other things need to be renewed.

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There is one... How about just using the International Star Registry as your catalog and cross reference? I'm sure you'll get names for just about any star.

The GAIA catalogue is worth looking forward to; but as it will map a billion stars or so, it is inevitable that the numerical component will have up to ten digits. (unless they do it in hexadecimal or something).

There are just an awful lot of stars up there.

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Maybe grouping them into regions would that make it easier?

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To that list you might add the pulsar planet known as either PSR 1620-26 b or PSR 1620-26 c (depending on whether you believe the lower-case planet letters should run independently of the uppercase star letters) - the name Methuselah was used in a press conference, in reference to the likely great age of the planet, and has gained some common usage. Then there's Goldilocks around 70 Vir, commemorating the fact this object was originally thought to orbit in the star's hab zone; and Millennium around Tau Boo A, which I guess was named after the reported detection of reflected light from the planet in December 1999.
None official.

Grant Hutchison

Eight letter words, 26 possible letters in each position.. ~= 200 billion?

302,231,454,903,657,293,676,544 is a rough-and-sloppy calculation on my end. Is my math way off?

I think you computed 8^26.

That would be the number of different 26-symbol words made from 8 symbols.

The number of 8-symbol words made from 26 symbols would be 26^8. Google Calculator says 208 827 064 576.

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0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

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So... we're talking about randomly assigning letters in order to generate names? So instead of JMASS 1265876-5567456 whatever, you would have the much more handy "Tyrtgfhwoeudhnbslioeurlkjdfuy", with possibly a few non-English characters thrown in for good measure? **chuckles** I don't think so.

Typically what I do when referring to stars is to use an order of progression based on my own preferences. For instance, if the star has a proper name, such as Alpha Centauri, I'll use that. If not, then I'll go to the Flamsteed number, like 47 Ursae Majoris. If it lacks that, I will use any other combination that includes the constellation name, such as V167 Moncerotis. If not that, then I start using the Gliese catalogue numbers. After that, the Henry Draper numbers. Then the HR numbers, then the HIP numbers.... After that point, things get messy. But I try to avoid the DM numbers as much as I can.

but, as I said, that's personal preference, and I doubt that it reflects at all any professional practices.

...John...

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Lots of people have replied to the idea of creating new names, but what most astronomers do is make use of cross reference tools starting with whatever designation they have.

The best source I know is SIMBAD
http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/Simbad
where you can do searches based on just about anything including an identifier. For example, a star I have worked on a bit years ago I still remember as HD 21242 ... entering that in SIMBAD results in the page which can be found at http://tinyurl.com/dmpqw where more than 40 other designations for this RS CVn variable are listed.

Oh yes, I'd heard of Goldilocks before;
here is an image I've just made of it
http://img66.imageshack.us/img66/5295/goldilocks3qc.jpg
looks inviting, but the atmosphere is mostly hydrogen I believe

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I understand the point that's being made, but if all stars were listed in a single systematic way it would actually make the job of the professional astronomer harder. This is because it would make it more difficult to find stars which have the same or similar properties. Most professional astronomers will want to look up stars of a particular type, and will know which catalogue to look in. Furthermore they would probably recognize the catalogue identifier of any object they were interested in, or conversely, if they didn't recognize the identifier then the star probably isn't in their field of research. Having many different catalogues with different identifiers reduces the number of stars that have to be searched through in order to find the desired ones.

Yeah it does, but how about stars with long numeric names after 2/3 letters in front. Ex. HDE394-8110048-14818943108

Its hard to remember the catalog name.

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