You’ve probably heard star names such as Polaris the North Star – or Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion. But, although it’s also a star, our sun doesn’t have a generally accepted and unique proper name.
You sometimes hear the name Sol in association with the sun. That’s the Roman equivalent of the Greek sun god Helios. But neither Sol nor Helios is an official name for the sun, according to the International Astronomical Union.
So the sun doesn’t have its own name. But it does have a symbol that’s exclusively its own. The sun’s symbol is a circle with a dot in the center – used in mathematical formulas.
In being nameless, our sun has company. There are several thousand stars visible to the eye, and only a few hundred of them have names. Astronomers use the Greek alphabet to order visible stars in each constellation, according to their brightness. To identify stars invisible to the eye, astronomers turn to star catalogs, which assign a number to each star according to its position in the sky.
Our thanks to:
Frank Bash
University of Texas at Austin
When I was editing reports for the U.S. Global Change Research Program/Climate Change Science Program, the federal multiagency program that supports scientific research and global observing systems, we referred to the Sun and Earth, both capitalized, i.e., we treated them as proper nouns. In these U.S. Government publications, the name of the star at the center of our solar system is the Sun, and the name of our home planet is Earth. All stars are suns, but there is only one Sun.
Rick Piltz
Director, Climate Science Watch
Washington, DC
This NASA page says the sun doesn’t have a real name. http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/faq/index.cfm?Category=Sun
And it says the moon doesn’t either.
The sun does have a name – Helios
Some people call the moon Luna
if the sun has a name why dont we call it by it’s name?
Hi Elizabeth, the sun doesn’t have an official name.
Well who really gets to say whats official, I mean who gave the people at NASA the authority.
Hi Andrew, no one said anything about NASA, but you bring up a great point. Names for astronomical objects are made “official” by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).
Here’ more info about that: http://www.iau.org/public/naming/
Some have argued against the IAU’s naming policies since Pluto’s status was changed from “planet” to “dwarf planet.”
Deborah
those the sun has name???
Sol may not be official, but it is certainly the adapted name of our sun. A sun has planetary bodies or something in orbit around it. A star does not necessarily have planets. All suns are stars, not all stars are suns. The SOLar system, like the Andromeda System, are named after their stars…..or perhaps it’s just wishful thinking, you know, trying to make logical sense of the universe.
How about we call it “Arthur”. I’ve always liked that name. Thanks for answering my question though.
Yeah, Dan – that’s always been my thought. You don’t commonly hear someone say – the Andromeda Solar System, or “we’re searching for other Solar Systems”. Typically, it’s “Star System”, or more specifically, Andromeda System, Sol (ar) System, Etc.
This kinda bums me out though, cause just the other day I told my 8 year old the Sun’s real name is “Sol”. Now I’m going to have to admit I was wrong just so he doesn’t get into it with some whiz kid and get proven wrong. Lol.
From Wikipedia:
In Germanic paganism, the Sun is personified as a goddess; Sól/Sunna.[124]
Theories have been proposed that Sun, as Germanic goddess, may represent an extension of an earlier Proto-Indo-European deity due to Indo-European linguistic connections between Old Norse Sól, Sanskrit Surya, Gaulish Sulis, Lithuanian Saul?, and Slavic Solnitse.[124]
Not sure if it counts for anything, but in many science fiction universes – where star names have practical meaning because of Mankind’s ability to travel to different star systems – the Sun’s name is given as Sol.
Apparently, the recommendation from the IAU is to do initial caps on ANY type of astronomical object. It doesn’t imply that these are formal names for those objects. (“The IAU formally recommends that the initial letters of the names of individual astronomical objects should be printed as capitals (see the IAU Style Manual, Trans. Int. Astron. Union, volume 20B, 1989; Chapter 8, page S30 – PDF file); e.g., the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, etc.).
This thread has been going for several years now and seems to involve a number of people. I think WE should decide on a name for our Sun.
Sol and Helios are gods and “the Sol” is the same as “the Sun,” so I don’t think any of those work. It’s got to be a name that we would never precede a “the.”
I propose the name ‘Russ,” which I’ve always liked.
i was watching a Sci-Fi flick..and they i think they named their spacecraft after the Sun..they called it Solaris..?? i think?? if not..i like the sound of that..after all the Greek name..Solaris means.”like a Sun”..or was it?? latin for Sun..lol eighter way..Solarian Warlord has a nice ring to it..if i was a intergalatic warrior from the future i can hear myself introducing myself like so..{“I am the Thunder God Mucho-Grandias’ A hard-core Solarian-an intergalactic warlord from the small but mighty planet Earth!lol..and no..i do no drugs..lol
It’s Chad. I thought it that was common knowledge. The sun’s name is Chad.