{"id":7931,"date":"2025-09-14T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/?p=7931"},"modified":"2025-09-04T01:55:41","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T01:55:41","slug":"basque-fact-of-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/2025\/09\/14\/basque-fact-of-the-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Basque Fact of the Week: Su ta Gar, the Star and Exoplanet with Basque Names"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-background\">I have a dream of slowly migrating the original parts of this site &#8211; the parts you can find with the menu on the left of each page &#8211; to the more modern blog format of the newer version of Buber&#8217;s Basque Page. One of my first forays was to copy <a href=\"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/on-basque-astronymy-by-mg-ramos\/\">my translation of MG Ramos&#8217;s <em>De<\/em> <em>Astronom\u00e1stica Vasca<\/em><\/a>, a treatise from nearly 100 years ago about the Basque names for the sun and moon. In doing a little searching on what new information there might be, I stumbled upon this cool story about how a star and its exoplanet were given names in Euskara, a first for the language.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-medium\"><a href=\"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Exoearth.7.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" src=\"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Exoearth.7-300x169.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7932\" srcset=\"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Exoearth.7-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Exoearth.7.png 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">An artist&#8217;s schematic of the structure of the exoplanet Su. Image from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iac.es\/en\/outreach\/news\/gliese-486-b-rosetta-stone-study-exoplanets\">Instituto de Astrof\u00edsica de Canarias<\/a>. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iau.org\">International Astronomical Union<\/a> has, amongst other functions, the authority to assign names to celestial bodies, including stars and planets. Founded in 1919 and headquartered in Paris, France, the IAU holds a regular contest called <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/NameExoWorlds\">NameExoWorlds<\/a> with the goal of naming a selection of exoplanets that have been discovered.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>An <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Exoplanet\">exoplanet<\/a> is any planet that resides outside of our solar system. The first confirmed discovery of such a planet was in 1992, when two such planets &#8211; now called <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/PSR_B1257%2B12_C\">Phobetor<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/PSR_B1257%2B12_B\">Poltergeist<\/a> &#8211; were discovered orbiting a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pulsar\">pulsar<\/a> called <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/PSR_B1257%2B12\">Lich<\/a>. As of today, nearly 6,000 exoplanets have been discovered.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The star now known as <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gliese_486\">Gar<\/a> was previously designated as either Gliese 486 or\u00a0Wolf 437. Residing in the constellation <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Virgo_(constellation)\">Virgo<\/a>, it is a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Red_dwarf\">red dwarf<\/a> star that is about 26 light years away from Earth. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In 2021, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mpia.de\/news\/science\/2021-05-gliese486b\">an exoplanet was discovered<\/a> orbiting Gar by a team led by Trifon Trofonov with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mpia.de\/en\">Max Planck Institute for Astronomy<\/a>. This planet, now named Su, has been studied using the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/James_Webb_Space_Telescope\">James Webb Space Telescope<\/a> which has found that the day time surface temperature is in excess of 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. This suggests Su has little to no atmosphere. It is about 3 times as massive as the Earth but is rocky. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A team from the University of the Basque Country, led by Itziar Garate-Lopez, proposed the names Gar and Su during the 2022 NameExoWorlds contest in part because the exoplanet had been discovered from observations made in Spain, with key contributions from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.caha.es\">Calar Alto Observatory<\/a>. It&#8217;s also a fiery ball of rock, which inspired the name Su.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In Euskara, Gar means flame and Su means fire. The Basque phrase &#8220;su ta gar&#8221; means literally &#8220;fire and flame,&#8221; but is used to indicate passion and enthusiasm. <a href=\"https:\/\/sutagar.com\/en\/\">Su Ta Gar<\/a> is also a heavy metal band from <a href=\"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/2021\/10\/24\/basque-fact-of-the-week-the-basque-city-of-eibar\/\">Eibar<\/a>, Gipuzkoa. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-background\">A full list of all of Buber&#8217;s Basque Facts of the Week can be found in the <a href=\"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/basque-fact-of-the-week-archive\/\">Archive<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Primary sources: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.agenciasinc.es\/Noticias\/Dos-sistemas-planetarios-reciben-nombres-en-euskera-y-catalan\">Dos sistemas planetarios reciben nombres en euskera y catal\u00e1n<\/a><\/em>, SINC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have a dream of slowly migrating the original parts of this site &#8211; the parts you can find with the menu on the left of each page &#8211; to the more modern blog format of the newer version of Buber&#8217;s Basque Page. One of my first forays was to copy my translation of MG [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[836,14],"tags":[4187,4188,4190,4189,1199],"class_list":["post-7931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basque-fact-of-the-week","category-euskara","tag-exoplanet","tag-international-astronomical-union","tag-lich","tag-pulsar","tag-su-ta-gar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Exoearth.7.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2sYNu-23V","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7931"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7936,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7931\/revisions\/7936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}