March 10, 2009

Exo Name Drop

The "Exo" in the name of all exoplanets discovered by CoRoT will now be dropped.
The new general rule is shown below:

::: change from CoRoT-Exo-nx to CoRoT-nx
::: with x = b, c, d...

Thus, what was previously called CoRoT-Exo-1b or CoRoT-Exo-2b will now be simply called CoRoT-1b and CoRoT-2b and so on.
Of course, I like to insist that the space be present between the digit and the index letter: CoRoT-1 b, CoRoT-2 b...
It was decided from a Scientific Council held on March 10, 2009. The authoritative Exoplanet Encyclopedia has now complied, as well as NASA's Planet Quest and Exoplanetology on Freebase. The Planetary Society has yet to update their catalog.
A word of assurance to those who are worried or iauphobic: All CoRoT planets are still exoplanets despite dropping the "exo" from their names. And undoubtedly, they are STILL planets. No plutogenous issues there.
So what's next? I have a hunch that another Scientific Council will be held to change all exoplanets names that have the prefix of HD, such as HD 80606 b, into Blu-Ray, making them like so: Blu-Ray 80606 b.