The Clouds could have another name...

As a tribute for the first circumnavigation of the globe (1519-1522), the Clouds of Magellan were named after the mariner Fernão de Magalhães. There are a few lines of description of the Clouds by Antonio Pigafetta, the escriber of Fernão de Magalhães sea expedition, saying that they are ``... several small stars clustered together in the manner of two clouds ...'' (Pigafetta 1536).

But just before, by the end of XV century, the Clouds had another name: Cape Clouds, in allusion to the Cape of Good Hope. The Clouds, visible from the Cape, were a reference to sailors for locating the South Pole. Even earlier, natives of the South Sea Islands, inhabitants of the Southern hemisphere that already knew the Clouds, named them ``Upper and Lower Clouds of Mist'' (Westerlund 1997, Bergreen 2003).

If it is not the only case, designations of celestial objects with non-scientists names are rare.

In our view, some astronomers also deserved to have their names assigned to the Clouds given their involvement with the study of these galaxies. John Herschel (1847) provided coordinates and descriptions of more than 1000 objects in the Clouds. Abbe (1867) suggested that the Clouds were nearby external galaxies. H. Leavitt (1912) discovered the period-luminosity relation of Cepheid variables in the Small Cloud, a fundamental step to the establishment of the extragalactic distance scale. Therefore, Clouds of Herschel or Clouds of Leavitt, would be much more appropriate and meaningful than Clouds of Magellan. Other identifiers are ESO 056-G 115, PGC 017223 or Nubecula Major for the Large Cloud, and NGC 292, ESO 029-G 021, PGC 003085 or Nubecula Minor for the Small Cloud. The last designations in these lists are in latim and were introduced by Johann Bayer (celestial atlas Uranometria, 1603). They also are recognized official names.

Magalhães met Brazilian indians at the Rio de Janeiro region during his search for the strait that would lead the squad to cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. The indians were the tupi-guaranis. Because the tupi-guaranis built a significant body of empirical astronomical knowlegdement (Afonso 2009), we judged appropriate to use the tupi-guarani denomination for the "constelations": Tapií Huguá (Large Cloud) and Coxi Huguá (Small Cloud), respectively, meaning ``tapir drinking fountain'' and ``skunk pig drinking fountain'' (Afonso 2006).

References

  • Afonso, G., 2006, ``Mitos e Estações no Céu Tupi-Guarani''. Scientific American Brasil, Ed. Especial: Etnoastronomia, pp. 46-55.
  • Afonso, G., 2009, ``Astronomia Indígena''. 61a. Reunião Anual da SBPC, Manaus, Scientific American Brasil, Ed. Especial: Etnoastronomia, pp. 46-55.
  • Bergreen, L., 2003, ``Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe'' HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
  • Pigafetta, A., 1536, ``Il primo viaggio in torno al globo``. Introduction and notes by Carlos Amoretti. Translation: Jurandir S. Santos, Ed. LP\&M, 2005.
  • Westerlund, B. E., 1997, ``The Magellanic Clouds'', Cambridge Astrophysics Series 29, Cambridge University Press ed.