This website is primarily the home base of a project to develop a consistent set of symbols for every named astronomical body. But it is also a tribute to and exploration of all of the ways we symbolically render the heavens, and flags are a very common kind of symbol. The use of "symbology" as a noun referring to a corpus of symbols isn't a very widespread, but there is hardly a more prominent example of an emergent symbology than that of flags — hence, the field of vexillology. I am hardly the first person to imagine what flags could exist for other planets, but according to a casual search I'm the first to propose the term astrovexillology. Here I discuss some of the flags that have been developed for various astronomical bodies by professionals and amateurs alike, and explore how such flags ought to be developed. There have been a number of proposals for flags of Earth. Many were developed by organizations or artists with peaceful intentions, with the notion of representing humanity as a collective whole. None exists in any official capacity, however, given the lack of a (non-consipracy theory) world government. Maybe the IAU has the authority to declare one, but that would probably be an overstepping of their duty. I digress. The Earth flag proposal I like best is Oskar Pernefeldt's "International Flag of the Planet Earth," created in 2015 for the express purpose of representing humans of any nationality in space. It is a 2:3 flag, consisting of seven white interlocked rings on an azure background. The blue represents the terrestrial sea and sky, the rings represent the seven major continents, and the central details depict a flower, representing life on Earth. Although it is sort of challenging to draw, I think it represents the Earth pretty well. Just don't go pledging allegiance to it yet. Similarly, there is no official flag of Mars, not at least because nobody lives there. There are a number of flag propositions for this planet, as Mars is a favorite of science fiction writers. However, there is one flag that has reached a virtually ubiquitous status: the Martian tricolour invented by Pascal Lee in 1998. The flag represents the present (red) and possible future through human settlement and terraforming (green and blue) of Mars. To be quite specific, the Pantone colors are "Red Clay" (18-1454), "Mint Green" (17-6333), and "Imperial Blue" (19-4245). The flag is optimistically used by the Mars Society and the Planetary Society, has been used in mock-ups and simulations of Mars missions, and even flew on the STS-103 Discovery shuttle mission. Some individuals have taken on the task of creating more astronomical flags, in projects that sort of parallel this one.
Coming up with flag designs for tens of thousands of minor planets would be a task even more challenging than the one I am already in the midst of. Therefore, I think it would be nice to come up with a procedural method to develop minor planets flags as placeholders. In Ted Kaye's Good Flag, Bad Flag, he provides five key principles for designing a good flag:
I think these are pretty good guidelines; in fact, principles 1, 2, and 5 are almost exactly rules that I follow for the Night Sky Symbology. Taking these principles as rules, here is the procedure for coming up with a simple 2:3 flag for each minor planet:
This scheme generally produces decent-looking flags, but it may be that their general relatedness violates principle number 5. I can live with that. I consider these flags to be mainly placeholders anyway, just suggestions until someone with either a need or a responsibility comes along and designs a flag for some specific minor planet. |
Astrovexillology
page revision: 21, last edited: 27 Jun 2021 17:54