When the asteroids were first being discovered starting in 1800, they were awarded astrological symbols just like the planets. In 1851, when some were calling for a switch to a simpler and more memorable numerical system, Benjamin Gould, editor of the Astronomical Journal, stated:

I understand this decision, but I think it was motivated by fear. I can do better.

This wiki is a one-person passion project to develop an iconic and distinctive symbol for every named non-stellar object in the night sky - including planets, moons, comets, dwarf planets, and even exoplanets. I have already developed thousands of interrelated symbols, based on symbols from a wide range of cultures and time periods. This is a protracted exercise in astrosymbology, a field that I imagine adjacent to the likes of heraldry and vexillology.

There are approximately 20,000 minor planets with official IAU names. I estimate that I have gathered or created symbols for at least 2000 of them, and I am continuing to develop more. In time, I will record them here.

Right now this wiki is in the early stages of construction! Later, it will be filled with articles for each symbolized body, including descriptions and design choices for the symbol, and other things, like my manifesto and general design guidebook for this project. For the time being, I'm afraid it mainly has hand-drawn images and broken links.

You can contact me at the Contact link above. I encourage feedback and discussion about the symbols posted on this site.

Here's a random minor planet article: 2062 Aten

2062.png

This minor planet is named after the Ancient Egyptian god Aten, who was in most cases a pretty minor deity. He was the god of the solar disk and associated with the more commonly worshipped deity Ra (not unlike the relationship between the gods Helios and Apollo in Greek myth.)

However, during the reign of Amenhotep IV, later and better known as Akhenaten, the god Aten was elevated to a position of supreme celestial importance. While Ancient Egyptian beliefs were usually polytheistic or henotheistic, with individual pharaohs sometimes emphasizing particular deities, Akhenaten shifted the state religion to Atenism, a nearly monotheistic (or monolatrous?) belief system that venerated Aten as god of all creation.

The symbol of this asteroid is a stylized form of most depictions of the deity in Ancient Egyptian art: a solar disk, as the symbol for the Sun, with three arrows coming down — one vertical, two at 45-degree angles — all terminating at the same horizontal line.

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