Professor Todd Vaccaro gave the winning suggestion, Dagon, in the St. Cloud State Planetarium exoplanet naming contest. The planetarium submitted the name in the International Astronomical Union’s NameExoWorlds contest.
St. Cloud State University Planetarium has made its name among the stars.
Or, more accurately, planets.
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The Planetarium’s proposal to name exoworld Fomalhaut b, Dagon, was chosen by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in December. An exoworld is a planet located outside of our solar system.
Dagon is the name of a Syrian fish god. The star Dagon orbits is Fomalhaut, a bright star in the constellation Piscis Australis, the Southern Fish.
The name garnered the most votes in IAU’s online naming contest for Fomalhaut b. Designed to increase public interest in astronomy, the contest selected names for 19 exoworlds with proposals coming in from across the globe.
In her commitment to community outreach, Planetarium Director Annette Lee designed the St. Cloud State Exoplanet Naming Contest event in conjunction with the IAU contest to invite anyone from the community send in a proposal. The votes were tallied and the winner of the Planetarium’s proposal was announced in May.
Professor Todd Vaccaro gave the suggestion Dagon to honor mythology, the planet’s star, constellation and the early 20th-century science fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft. The suggestion won the most votes in the St. Cloud State Planetarium’s naming contest in May, and the Planetarium made the official proposal to the IAU, where it was entered into the worldwide naming contest.
Vaccaro picked the name to give homage to the trend of naming planets as gods from various pantheons. Since the constellation is a fish and Fomalhaut is Arabic for “Fish’s mouth,” the name of a fish deity seemed appropriate, he said.
Dagon is also a character from a short story of the same name by Lovecraft. One of Vaccaro’s favorite authors, Lovecraft was fascinated with astronomy and wrote often about the vastness of space and the smallness of man.
“There’s just so much about the name that was perfect,” Vaccaro said.
With more than 6,000 votes, the St. Cloud State’s Dagon beat out suggestions from Argentina, Japan Uruguay, Australia and China.
Dagon is one of four exoworlds named by institutions in North America.
