Greek astronomers have appealed to the world's top astronomical body to maintain a tradition of naming planets after Greek mythological figures, the Athens Observatory said on Friday.
The Greeks were riled when a new planet-sized object discovered in 2003 was unofficially called 'Xena' in hommage to the main character of the American fantasy television series "Xena: Warrior Princess".
"This provisional name … is at the origin of this initiative taken by the observatory," the institute's astronomy department director Christos Goudis said.
Observatory chairman Christos Zerefos wrote a letter to the International Astronomical Union on August 20 proposing the names of a number of Greek mythological figures to replace 'Xena', Goudis said.
"The last five years have seen a new interpretation of the solar system and we have to avoid giving offhand names to newly-discovered stars," Goudis told AFP.
"Astronomy has deep roots … we must preserve this historic tradition," he said.
A team led by US astronomer Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology discovered 'Xena', a frozen object some 15 billion kilometres (nine billion miles) from Earth, in 2003.
A fan of the popular television series, Brown has nine years to think of a permanent name for the orb, originally designated as 2003 UB313.
Source: Agence France-Presse
