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Voters from each of the countries involved with the International Astronomical Union (IAU) are urged to choose one of 12 pairs of names, the shortlist of the most popular from every nation will be drawn up and the overall world winner announced in mid-December.
If you're in Spain, you have until Tuesday, November 12 to cast your vote on the website Name ExoPlanets, choosing from the list of pairs devised by the Canarian Astrophysics Institute's Dr Ricardo Dorda.
“Given how close the star and the planet are, and yet their absence of contact, the idea is to name them after a famous pair from history who never got together,” the researcher says.
Ideas come from nature, ancient civilisation, historical events, mythology, legends and literature – and at the moment, the most popular seems to be the names of the Lovers of Teruel, Isabel and Diego, whose 'closeness without touching' would make them ideal candidates.
But anything relating to Don Quijote is out – that's already been done. The IAU sought public votes to name the star Mu Arae and its four planets in 2015, and Pamplona Planetarium and the Spanish Astronomy Society, backed by the Cervantes Institute, put forward the names of Cervantes (the author), Quijote, Rocinante (his trusty horse), Sancho (his long-suffering, faithful friend) and Dulcinea (the woman he falls in love with).
Spain was the third country on earth with the highest participation, after India and the USA, and the Quijote options gained 38,000 votes, making them the outright winners.
Here's what Spain will be voting for this time around.
Isabel and Diego
Aragón's answer to Romeo and Juliet, the tragic tale of the upper-class Isabel de Segura and the poor labourer's son Juan Martínez de Marcilla – later renamed Diego in the 18th-century theatre versions of the legend – who fell in love, but who knew their social divide would always prevent their being together, comes to a similar sticky ending as Shakespeare's most famous thwarted couple.
Diego, knowing Isabel's parents would never consent to her union with a poor – albeit honourable – man, decides to take off to the New World to earn enough money to make him worthy of asking for her hand in marriage. He promises that if she waits for five years, he will return a rich man.
She agrees, but just as the five years are up, her father insists she takes a husband – and Isabel, by this time, is beginning to fear her lover is dead or has left her.
Diego returns on the day of the nuptials and creeps into the newlyweds' room at night, telling Isabel to kiss him, because he is 'dying' – but she pleads with him to find another and says she cannot be unfaithful to her husband.
Diego drops dead and, during his funeral, Isabel decides to kiss him as he wished, and dies in doing so.
Their prostrate marble statues lie in Teruel cathedral and, at first glance, they appear to be holding hands – but they are not quite touching, in keeping with the legend of how they just missed each other in life.
As well as a huge tourist attraction, the Lovers of Teruel have given rise to an annual festival – since 1996, the city has staged a re-enactment of Isabel's wedding, although often, they change the ending so Diego and Isabel get together at the last minute.
Breogán and Ith
The former was the Celtic King of what is now Galicia, according to the Book of Irish Conquests (Lebor Gabála Érenn), penned in the 11th century.
He founded the city of Brigantia, which is thought to be what is now Betanzos or A Coruña, and built a tower so tall his 10 children were able to see a green coastline on the horizon, which turned out to be Ireland.
Breogán's tower, the one that started all the trouble, was believed by 19th-century historians to be the Hercules Tower in A Coruña (pictured), which has a statue of the figure now considered to be the mythological 'Father of Galicia', Breogán, at its foot.
Cuélebre and Xana
The cuélebre, which has its roots in the word culebra, meaning 'cobra', is described in Asturian mythology as a dragon-like creature, or more like a winged serpent – its eyes are burning flame, its body is covered in scales and bat-wings grow out of its back.
This delightful-sounding creature is actually the good guy in the legends of Asturias: his job is to guard buried treasure, something which crops up regularly in the region's folklore and where the locations of the booty are routinely described – although as yet, nobody has found any.
The Cuélebre hides in caves, woodlands and rivers, and emits an horrendous, loud, high-pitched whistle which is said to be intolerable for humans who live near his habitats, but at least it warns them he is near, given that his diet mainly consists of them. To avoid being eaten, men are said to leave maize-flour bread out to satiate him instead.
Xanas are water-nymphs of whom the Cuélebre is custodian, and the famous battle between him and one of these is represented in the midsummer bonfires in Asturias.
Sometimes, Xanas swap their babies for human ones, so as to infiltrate the race, and other times, they turn into giant serpents when guarding buried treasure.
Iberia and Millares
The ancient civilisation known as the Millares are thought to have inhabited what is now Spain and Portugal between around 3,200 and 2,200 BC, during the Copper Age, and a huge settlement they left behind – a 15-acre village and a necropolis of 32 acres – can be found in Santa Fe de Mondújar, Almería province. It is considered to be one of the biggest and most complete Millar settlements in Europe, if not the world, and features the remains of a town built within four walls, a burial site with around 80 common tombs, and a fortress.
A themed information park area has been set up so visitors can learn more, and examples of their original houses made (pictured).
The Iberians are Spain's original inhabitants and theories abound as to their origins and exact age: genetic anthropologists believe they arrived on the peninsula in the Neolithic era, around 5,000BC, but were still around by 3,000BC, and came from the eastern Mediterranean; other, albeit disputed, studies claim they originate from north Africa and first settled along the east coasts; and some research even claims they were the creators and inheritors of the megalithic culture in western Europe, in what is now Ireland, the UK and France, before crossing the Pyrénées. In fact, it is thought that the Iberians, or their descendants, may have been among those who built Stonehenge.
Tajo and Jarama
These are two of Spain's largest rivers – the former, often referred to in English as the 'Tagus', has its source in the natural springs in the rural village of Albarracín in the southern Aragón province of Teruel, and its delta is in Portugal, where it is known as the 'Tejo'. En route, it crosses through three Castilla-La Mancha provinces, those of Guadalajara, Cuenca, and Toledo, and through Madrid and the province of Cáceres in the land-locked region of Extremadura.
The Jarama is an affluent of the Tajo, breaking off from the main river in the Peña Cebollera in the Ayllón mountains, known as the 'Three-Province Peak', as it sits on the borders of Madrid, Guadalajara and Segovia (Castilla y León). The only river that crosses the capital from north to south, it rejoins the Tajo in the Greater Madrid region town of Aranjuez.
Rosalía and Río Sar
Likely to be popular with young voters because of the flamenco-hip hop singer of the same name, this time 'Rosalía' refers to 'de Castro', a 19th-century poet and novelist who died at the tender age of 48 from uterine cancer but who still managed to pack plenty of literature into her short life – considered one of the founders of modern Spanish poetry and a cultural icon of her native Galicia, she also defied convention and wrote in the regional language, gallego, the use of which was frowned upon and considered vulgar. By using the tongue as a vehicle for her profound verse and prose, she helped thrust it into the mainstream.
Among her most noted poems is En las Orillas del Sar, or 'On the Shores of the Sar', a 42-kilometre inland river running through Santiago de Compostela – written in the last years of her life, it is a tragic and profound piece, and considered one of the greatest poetic works of the whole of the 19th century. In the last few years, Rosalía de Castro's works have been translated into French, German, Russian and even Japanese.
Elcano and Victoria
Juan Sebastián Elcano, along with Portuguese sailor Fernando Magalhães – who did not survive the trip – is credited with making the first-ever complete round-the-world voyage by ship. They set off from Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz province) in September 1519, but Magalhães only made it as far as the Philippines, in 1521. The voyage headed down the west coast of Africa, through what is now known as the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde, via the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, Indonesia, Brunei and, after the Philippines, crossed the Pacific Ocean to circumnavigate the far southern tip of Chile and Argentina. The strip of sea between here and the Antarctic is known as the Strait of Magallanes – Magalhães' surname in Spanish.
The Nao [ship] Victoria stopped off at several points along the South American coast, including Río de la Plata in Buenos Aires and the bay of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, the point at which it left the new world and headed back to Spain, reaching Sanlúcar again in September 1522.
A replica of the Victoria lives in the museum of the same name in Punta Arenas, Chile, and has toured the globe, more recently being displayed in Dénia (Alicante province) where visitors were able to clamber on board and take a guided tour.
Tirant and Carmesina
Pre-dating Don Quijote by well over a century and considered the Valencia regional version of the hapless, adventure-loving knight, Tirant lo Blanc is quite possibly Spain's first-ever piece of literature in novel format – something Quijote is normally credited with.
But off the battlefield and in love, Tirant is a disaster – he turns into a stuttering, stumbling nerd who never gets the girl.
And the girl he most wants is out of his league – Carmesina, a woman of singular and dazzling beauty with one sole aim in life: that of keeping her virginity intact.
Culebra and Malpolón; Zamenis and Phion
The first is the Spanish name for cobra, and the second is the Malpolon Monspessulanus, a type of cobra which is poisonous, but not dangerous to humans, and which is native to Spain – although fortunately, extremely rare, so it is very unlikely you'll find one on your travels in the country.
Zamenis and Phion are characters from Greek mythology related to snakes.
Luz and Sombra; Girasol and Pétalo
Luz means 'light' in Spanish, although if you hear people talking about how their luz bill has suddenly gone up in the last month, they're actually referring to the electricity. And sombra means shade, and also shadow.
Girasol is the Spanish word for sunflower, and pétalo, you might have guessed, is the name for 'petal'.
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