Astronomers Call for Magellanic Clouds to be Renamed Amid Claims of 'Violent Colonialist Legacy'
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Astronomers have called for the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds to be renamed due to their namesake’s ‘violent colonialist legacy’. The dwarf galaxies, which have been known about for more than 1,000 years after being spotted by indigenous peoples across South America, Australia, and Africa, are named after the 16th-century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. Magellan claimed to have discovered them with his crew during his first circumnavigation of the globe between 1519 and 1522.
Mia de los Reyes, an assistant professor of astronomy at Amherst College, Massachusetts, has branded Magellan ‘a coloniser, a slaver and a murderer’, adding that he was ‘no astronomer’, nor was he the first to discover the galaxies because indigenous peoples had ‘names and legends for these systems that predate Magellan by thousands of years’.
Professor de los Reyes said she and ‘a coalition of astronomers’ were calling for the scientific community to rename the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, ‘as well as other astronomical objects, institutions, and facilities that bear his name’. A lunar crater, a Martian crater, NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, the twin Magellan telescopes in Chile and the next-generation extremely large telescope currently under construction – called the Giant Magellan Telescope – are all named after the Portuguese explorer.
‘I and many other astronomers believe that astronomical objects and facilities should not be named after Magellan, or after anyone else with a violent colonialist legacy,’ Professor de los Reyes wrote in the American Physical Society journal. She said that the explorer had murdered, enslaved and burned the homes of indigenous people during his circumnavigation of the globe, while also placing iron manacles on the ‘youngest and best proportioned men’ in what is now Argentina.
Of the Magellanic Clouds, Professor de los Reyes added that ‘the beauty of these starry objects is clouded by their names’. She suggested changing the ‘m’ in LMC and SMC from Magellan to something like ‘meridional’, which means ‘of or related to the Southern Hemisphere’. Another alternative, Professor de los Reyes added, would be to use ‘Milky’ because of the clouds’ association with the Milky Way.
Not everyone agrees that the dwarf galaxies' names should be changed, however. A number of X users took to the social media platform to criticise the plea, with some calling it ‘#woke astronomy’. Bob Blackman, the Conservative MP for Harrow East, also said it was ‘absolute nonsense’ to call for the galaxies to be renamed. ‘We can all look back on various different people’s involvement in the slave trade, but the reality is that if you’re going to start renaming everything that involved everyone from the slave trade you won’t have many left,’ he told the Telegraph.
The Large Magellanic Cloud is 160,000 light-years away from us, while the Small Magellanic Cloud is around 200,000 light-years away. They orbit the Milky Way once every 1,500 million years and each other once every 900 million years. The very first recorded mention of the Large Magellanic Cloud was by Persian astronomer Shirazi, in his Book of Fixed Stars around 964 AD.
Astronomers are now calling for the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds to be given a new title due to their namesake’s ‘violent colonialist legacy’. While some disagree, others believe that astronomical objects and facilities should not be named after anyone with a violent colonialist legacy, and that the beauty of these starry objects is clouded by their current names.
