A new naming system gives every tiny patch of the night sky a unique, three-word address.
April 1, 2026
Original Paper
StarHash: unique, memorable, and deterministic names for astronomical objects
arXiv · 2603.29584
The Takeaway
Astronomers currently identify stars using long, unreadable strings of coordinates like 'J222324.32+744222.0.' This new system, StarHash, replaces them with memorable word combinations, effectively creating a 'what3words' for the entire universe to help humans navigate the stars more intuitively.
From the abstract
The naming of astronomical objects has represented among the most significant challenges in the record-keeping of the field since the very beginning. Long and unwieldy coordinate names, uninformative and ambiguous internal names, and the sheer volume of aliases accumulated for some of the most studied objects conspire to complicate our study of the celestial sphere. This paper proposes StarHash, a reproducible, open-source astronomical naming scheme based on the terrestrial concept of geohashing