The name of navigator Ferdinand Magellan has been written in the stars for years, but that could change. The two satellite galaxies of the Milky Way (very bright), observable in the Southern Hemisphere, which are named after the Portuguese – Large and Small Magellanic Clouds – are disputed by a group of astronomers who want to remove the Portuguese name from the sky. They claim the 16th-century navigator was a murderer and that he enslaved and burned the homes of indigenous people during the first circumnavigation expedition around the planet. They therefore emphasize that their name should not be associated with galaxies. Astronomer Mia de los Reyes, from Amherst College in Massachusetts, US, quoted by the British newspaper The Guardian, says that “Magellan committed terrible acts. He and his men burned down villages and murdered residents in what is now Guam and the Philippines is”.
Magellan led the Spanish expedition in 1519 that established the first European navigation to Asia across the Pacific Ocean, and was killed in 1521 in a battle with the indigenous people of what is now the Philippines.
In an article in the journal APS Physics, Reyes calls on the International Astronomical Union – the body responsible for naming celestial bodies – to rename the Magellanic Clouds. “I and many other astronomers believe that space objects and installations should not be named after Magellan, or anyone else with a violent colonialist past.”
According to David Hogg, a professor at New York University, it is not only because of Magellan’s actions that his name should be removed from the satellite galaxies, but because “they were not discovered by him,” he told the website space.com .
Indigenous peoples in the Southern Hemisphere had their own names for these celestial bodies. Only at the end of the 19th century were they named after the Portuguese explorer. “When we defend the names of people, like Ferdinand Magellan, whose lives and legacies have been actively damaged, we alienate the communities that have been harmed,” Mia de los Reyes added to the same newspaper.
Source: DN
