(SCIENCE TREK MUSIC) JOAN CARTAN-HANSEN, HOST: Exoplanets generally have numbers instead of names.
Why?
Well, first of all, there are a huge number of exoplanets out there.
So, naming each one individually would be really hard.
While the numbers may seem really odd, there is a method to naming, I mean numbering exoplanets.
The most common name, okay I'm just going to say name, is something like HD then a string of numbers and then a lower-case letter.
The HD and the number are the name of the star the exoplanet orbits.
It tells where you find the star in the night sky.
Astronomers already have catalogued these stars in a giant database.
The lowercase letter at the end tells you the order in which the exoplanet was discovered for that star.
The first one gets a "b."
The next gets a "c" and so on.
If astronomers find a whole bunch of exoplanets around a star at the same time, then they're assigned letters based on the how close they orbit to the star.
By the way, they start with the lower letter b because the star itself is identified with a capitol letter A.
For more information about exoplanets, check out the Science Trek website.
You'll find it at Science Trek.org.
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