Plaskett's Star
modern name for HD 47129 A = V640 Mon, a V=6.06 mag O supergiant binary – two ~55 solar mass stars.
Etymology and History
Name appears to stem from Struve (1948) “J. S. Plaskett's Star of Large Mass, HD 47129” and subsequently as “Plaskett’s Star” by Abhyankar (1957). Struve remarked that the system was unique for its total mass being so massive (>139 Msun)
IAU Star Name
The name appears in various name compendia:
- Hoffleit’s Bright Star Catalog 4th & 5th eds,
- Burnham (1978),
- Spite & Lahmek (1982),
- Lortet & Spite (1986),
- Fernandez+(1983)
Recent examples of use in paper title’s:
- Mahy+2011 2011A&A...525A.101M ,
- Grunhut+2013 2013MNRAS.428.1686G,
- Palate & Rauw (2014) 2014A&A...572A..16P,
- Naze+2017 (2017MNRAS.467..501N)
“Plaskett’s Star” has its own entry in “Encyclopedia of Astronomy & Astrophysics” (ed. Murdin, 2001)
Name is already in SIMBAD and a wikipedia entry.
The star has no other known alias.
Still, the WGSN decided in 2022, that we currently do not name stars after people because this might cause political issues and we currently don't have the capacity to study and judge the lifes of persons.
