“Eskimo is seen as a colonial term with a racist past imposed on the indigenous people of the Arctic,” NASA explains.
The name ‘Siamese Gemini system’ is also deleted. Those are two galaxies that merge into each other. From now on, NASA will only use the scientific names NGC 4567 and NGC 4568. The space agency is now looking at whether there are more offensive and undesirable nicknames in the universe.
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The International Astronomical Union deals with the official names in the universe. These are mainly complicated scientific codes full of numbers.
Horsehead Nebula
Organizations themselves can choose to use names that are easier to remember. For example, the object Barnard 33 is also called the Horsehead Nebula because it resembles the head of a horse.
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