Where do X-ray sources get their names?
You’ve probably seen some very strange names for X-ray sources. You may have wondered “how DO they come up with those names?” Well, X-ray sources get their names from the constellations, from famous catalogs, from the satellites that discovered them and their coordinates in Right Ascension and Declination (like longitude and latitude), other coordinate systems and the year they were discovered, just to name a few. In the early days of X-ray astronomy, new objects were named after the constellation they were in. Objects like Cygnus X-1, LMC X-4, and Cen X-3 have this form. After it became obvious that there were going to be more than 20 or 30 X-ray sources, this naming convention was abandoned. Unfortunately, a single convention has never been agreed upon. Following are some examples of X-ray source names and where they came from.
