Is there a star or supernova by the name of Xibalba?

Answer 1

Xibalba is the name of the Mayan underworld ... essentially the equivalent of the Greek Hades (the place, not the god). Also, the Mayans appear to have regarded a dark rift in the Orion Constellation as being the road to Xibalba. On Ganymede, one of Jupiter's moons, there is a feature (a sulcus, which is basically a kind of ditch) named after it; that's the only modern non-fictional astronomical reference to it that I know of The nebula in the movie, The Fountain, is referred to as Xibalba, which the Mayans believed to be the Orion Nebula. There is no star or nebula technically referred to as Xibalba, but as you can see throughout the movie, it is shown to be within the constellation Orion and specifically the location of the Orion Nebula. According to Wikipedia: "The Maya of Central America had a folk tale which dealt with Orion's part of the sky, known as Xibalba. Their traditional hearths included in their middle a smudge of glowing fire that corresponded with the Orion nebula. This is clear pre-telescope evidence that the Maya detected a diffuse area of the sky contrary to the pin points of stars."