Name origin: Slavic goddess of the wilderness, forests and the hunt. The name was chosen in 2018 to mark the discovery taking place during the Polish Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment of Warsaw University, which was led by co-discoverer Andrzej Udalski.
Typhon was a storm-giant, so huge that his head was said to brush the stars, who laid siege to the realm of the gods but was defeated by Zeus. He is said to be the cause of volcanic eruptions and of devastating storms. His name is considered to be a possible etymology for the word “typhoon”. Ekhidna was his consort, a she-dragon who birthed a number of the Titans.
Name origin: Important Egyptian underworld god, husband of Isis. Osiris was originally a local deity from Lower Egypt who may have been a personification of fertility in the chthonic realms. He evolved to represent both fertility and death/resurrection.
Name origin: Genus of perennial flowering plants native to southern Africa, commonly called the natal or bush lily. They have green, long leaves and mainly bell-shaped flowers, with berry fruits. The genus itself is named after Charlotte Percy (née Clive), who first cultivated the plant in the U.K.
Name origin: Titan goddess of falling stars, dream divination and astrology. Asteria was the mother of Hekate, goddess of witchcraft and magic, by Perses. After the fall of the Titans, Zeus (being Zeus) chased Asteria across the sky but she escaped him by transforming herself into a quail and then leaping into the sea to become the wandering island of Delos.
Name origin: Ancient Greek goddess of the underworld. Persephone as a vegetation goddess and her mother Demeter were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which promised the initiated a happy afterlife.
Name origin: Greek sea-monster, daughter of Pontos and Gaia. Kharybdis presided over a whirlpool guarding the Strait of Messina and was likely the cause of the tides with her thrice-daily intake and expulsion of large amounts of water.
Name origin: Pacific Ocean, the largest on the planet, which covers approximately 46% of Earth’s water surface and about 32% of its total surface, more than its entire land area. Mean depth is 4km; the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench reaches 10.9km. The ocean straddles the International Date Line.
Name origin: Greek; food of the gods. The word ambrosia means immortality, and is often said to have either that effect or longevity on whoever consumes it. The term may not originally have been distinguished from nectar, the other food of the gods.
Nausikaä was the young daughter of Alcinous and Arete in the Odyssey; she meets the shipwrecked Odysseus and aids him. She may afterwards have married his son Telemachus, and possibly had sons by him or by Odysseus himself.
