Kronos

Authors: Doris Vickers, Susanne M Hoffmann

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"Kronos" is the Greek god. The name is in SIMBAD for HD 240430 (V=9.56mag).

Concordance, Etymology, History

Semyeong Oh+ 2018 2018ApJ...854..138O, w/Kronos

"Throughout the article, we nickname the two stars Kronos (HD 240430) and Krios (HD 240429). In Greek mythology, Kronos and Krios were sons of the gods Uranos and Gaia. Kronos notoriously devoured all of his children (except for Zeus) to prevent a prophecy from coming true, which predicted that he would be overthrown by them one day."

"Krios and Kronos were identified as a candidate comoving star pair in our recent search for comoving stars using the proper motions and parallaxes from the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution catalog (TGAS), a component of Gaia DR1. We refer the readers to this previous work (Oh et al. 2017) for a full explanation of the method behind this search..."

Miquelarena et al 2024 https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024A%26A...688A..73M/abstract speak of "the benchmark pair Krios and Kronos".

Mythology

In Greek theogonic myth, Kronos (often Latinized as Cronus) serves as the formidable leader of the Titans, the pre-Olympian generation of deities who were eventually defeated and overthrown by Zeus and his siblings. Within the broader Mediterranean religious landscape, he was identified with the West Semitic god El and the Roman deity Saturnus; like his Roman counterpart, he was also associated with the celestial body that bears his name, the planet Saturn.

In the oldest and most influential version of the myth, recorded by the poet Hesiod in his Theogony, Kronos is the youngest son of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth). The cosmos began in a state of stagnant union until, acting on the strategic advice of his mother, Kronos intervened to separate the two primordial parents. He achieved this by emasculating his father with a harpe, a specialized, dentated sickle of flint or adamant. By severing Heaven from Earth, Kronos effectively "unlocked" the world, freeing his siblings from Gaia’s cramped body where Uranus had forcibly confined the newborns immediately after birth. Emerging victorious from this rebellion, Kronos ascended as the new King of the Gods.

Despite his role as a liberator, Kronos’s reign was defined by the same cycle of paranoia that plagued his father. He entered into a union with his sister Rhea, but the couple’s offspring (the future Olympic gods) faced a grim fate. Haunted by a prophecy that a male successor would one day topple him, Kronos sought to bypass destiny by devouring his children the moment they were born. Rhea eventually managed to save only her youngest son, Zeus, through a clever ruse. Instead of the child, she presented Kronos with a stone wrapped in diapers, which he swallowed whole. She then carried the infant to Crete, where he was raised in secret, far from his father's gaze.

Once Zeus reached adulthood, he returned to fulfill the very prophecy Kronos had tried to avoid. He successfully forced Kronos to disgorge the swallowed stone along with his siblings, who had remarkably grown to adolescence while remaining alive inside their father's body. With the help of these newly freed siblings, Zeus launched a massive insurrection known as the Titanomachy. This cosmic war lasted ten years and shook the foundations of the universe. Ultimately, the Olympians overpowered Kronos and the Titans, and the defeated enemies were exiled to the lightless depths of Tartarus, a subterranean abyss.

IAU Working Group on Star Names

The name has been in SIMBAD for long time and was approved by the IAU WGSN in 202x. As this star is already named ..., the WGSN chose ... (not to apply/ to apply the name to a neighbouring star/ to ...) in the IAU-CSN.

Reference

• References (general)
• References (early modern)
• Ian Ridpath's website (Star Tales )