The International Star Registry & Naming Stars

[ASH2162]

This has been gnawing at my craw for a while, how someone would have the balls to sell a service claiming to name a star after a human being. More crazy than the creators of the "International Star Registry" are those imbecilic no-life idiots that actually plop down $49.95 for this "service".

These people should be shot immediately. How dare something so tiny and puny as a human being expect a star to be named after them? Furthermore, who is the "International Star Registry" anyway? Are these the same people who invented the Chia Pet? I did not read where they received the exclusive rights in the universe to name stars after Earthlings.

Sorry to vent, that whole Star Registry just aggrevates me....

[Littlemews]

Lol because they are rich, very rich....even u can name a star after you once u are rich........

[kashi]

I moved this topic here where it belongs.

[DippyHippy]

Littlemews, that's just the point, you can't have a star named after you, no matter how much money you have. All these customers are getting for their $50 is a pretty certificate and a map of the location of "their" star - which is probably fainter than magnitude 13 and extremely hard to find.

Unfortunately, it's not illegal for these companies to provide this "service" and the poor people who get suckered into it often don't realise they've been misled until it's too late.

[Dan Luna]

You're probably better off naming any future children "Sirius", "Vega" etc., but to officially name an astronomical object after yourself you need to discover an asteroid or comet. As pointed out by someone previously though, if it hits the Earth you may be sued (well, if it hits the US then). :unsure:

[damienpaul]

betelguese???...oh i see

allow me to introduce my son "betelgeuse vega sirius"

eeek

[Dan Luna]

It would be less embarrassing than a guy I used to work with who had his son christened "Aston" after Aston Villa football club in Birmingham.

[DippyHippy]

In my brother's year at school there were two girls, twins, who were born on the day Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. Their names? Apollo and Luna. Don't knock it - they got free trips to NASA and some TV time out of it

[damienpaul]

hmmmm, interesting ploy...

[Littlemews]

:blink: :blink: :blink:
I thought money is everything.. :blink: :blink: LOL

[damienpaul]

nah, its your name! like mine is Damien - the omen

[wgrayeski]

Post deleted for insulting language

[Planetwatcher]

As long as you know it for the ** it is it is harmless. Otherwise like ash2162 says, one can be douped.

[damienpaul]

i agree with planetwatcher and ash2162, and i am not sure of the language of wgrayeski

[sangretu]

My girlfriend got that ISR package for me several years ago. Every so often, she asks me if I think it's real or if it's just a scam. I always told her I thought it was real - I hadn't done any research on it, but the way it was explained to me was that there were so many stars out there that some smart folks in some big official astronomy organization decided to raise a little money by letting people name some of them, and the ISR was what they created to do that.

Just today, out of curiosity, I did a search online to see if I could find any evidence one way or another. I was surprised to discover that ISR is just a private company misleading people into thinking they are actually naming stars.

What a disappointment. I honestly don't care that I don't have a star named for me, but I feel really sorry for my girlfriend, who thought she was doing something special that would really endure. (If you thought diamonds were forever, imagine giving someone a star....)

So now, I'm not sure whether I should tell her or not. I know she'll be disappointed. But I really appreciate the fact that she did it. It's very sweet and I'll keep the map and such, because of what it means to us.

However, on the subject of the International Star Registry, I am extremely angry. I feel like they not only cheated her out of the money, but it's like selling someone an engagement ring that's not real gold, and telling them it is....isn't that something kind of sacred???

Comments welcome to arward@wm.edu

[DippyHippy]

sangretu, I've emailed you.

I might look into this further because although at the moment these companies aren't breaking the law (as long as they don't claim to be registering the name with any other company or organisation), it's extremely misleading... I'm wondering if the AAS might be looking into campaigning to have the law changed.

Personally, I'd like to see these blood suckers put out business! :angry:

[sangretu]

I seriously think these companies should be put out of business.

In general, any product or service for whom the majority of customers believe they are getting something that they are not....I think that counts as false advertising.

[Dave Mitsky]

Be advised that the ISR has been known to sue people who have attempted to warn others of its true nature.

Dave Mitsky

[DippyHippy]

Really?? That's despicable... you can't win a lawsuit when someone's telling the truth... I did an online search for star naming companies and did find one who said in their FAQ's that your star will never be officially known by the name you choose - they do at least make it clear it's a novelty gift.

I was thinking about writing a freelance piece about these companies, giving them a chance to put forward their point of view and getting the viewpoint of an astronomer but I'd have to be careful about how I write it.

The thing is, many of these companies say your star will be "officially" listed - the word 'official' is quite vague when it comes to the law. Really, it has no meaning at all... what's important is who you claim to register the name with. If you're saying that you're only officially registering the star name on your company records then you're not breaking any law. Even saying the records will be listed in the Library Of Congress doesn't mean anything because anyone can do that. The word "official" just makes it sound more important than it is.

[Bluewolf027]

Actually you guys are wrong in a way - there is more than one naming convention for stars so if these guys want to sell certificates for naming a star I see nothing wrong with it. They maintain a database of the stars they have named, any given star can have two or three names by the different naming conventions anyway.

[DippyHippy]

Yes but the only name(s) astronomers (and the rest of the world) recognise are those designated by the IAU - something these companies very rarely acknowledge. Many of these companies make it sound like star HD 123456 (or whatever) will forever be known to astronomers as "Dippy's Star" and that's plain wrong - and I don't care where it says otherwise in the small print!

[sangretu]

The point is that these folks are misleading their customers into thinking they are getting something that they are not. Whether or not they provide a valid service is irrelevant.

[DippyHippy]

Ah yeah but the usual argument *for* them is the same as mediumship and clairvoyancy... if a medium or clairvoyant fakes a message from dearly departed uncle John but the bereaved takes comfort from it, then some would argue "where's the harm in it?"

[jimmy]

amen to postt before last.

[damienpaul]

do these companies offer a disclaimer at all?

[DippyHippy]

Good question and the short answer is "no" - however, as I said, I did find one that mentioned in it's FAQ's that the names are *not* registered with the IAU and will never be known to astronomers by the name you chose. So that's something at least... I did admire them for their honesty but I'd have to look around to see if anyone else does the same.

[MarQ]

Even more disgusting than the star registry is a company selling plots on the Moon.
Sometimes I'm mad because I didn't think of it first, other times I think it is wrong, and another astrology-like duping of the science-naive world.
But that's our country's capitalist spirit--a sucker born every minute!

Sanguetu--Don't tell her!

[DippyHippy]

Ah, but to be fair, the Moon & Mars land-registry thing is pretty upfront about it all... these star-naming companies aren't.

[Planetwatcher]

There are at least 2 different intities involved in this naming bit. The dude who is selling plots on the Moon, Mars, Io, and Titan has been mentioned several times before. While he is not exactly up front, it is quite plain that he is running a scam and that his claim is a novilty at best.

This star naming registry may have been around a while, but it is new to me.
I seem to remember right around the holidays, someone posted a question asking for help to find a star someone named after him for Christmas. I looked it up and it turned out to me a galaxy. Is this the same as what you guys are talking about?

[DippyHippy]

I think so... usually the star turns out to be so faint that only someone who really knows their stuff and who owns some serious kit can find it. There used to be a great webpage maintained by someone who worked at Perkins observatory in Ohio and he had posted several stories of people coming to him and asking to be shown their star and then being extremely disappointed to find that not only was it extremely faint, that "their" star wasn't actually theirs at all.

In fact, if I remember rightly, he said one person got quite annoyed with him and told him he wasn't much of an astronomer because he couldn't find his 15th magnitude star and refused to believe it was simply labelled HD-whatever.

I've just found out from another site that as Dave Mitskey has said, the attorneys for one company threatened to sue Perkins Observatory unless they removed the webpage.

I've done some digging around and have found the following links explaining more about star registry companies...

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/mystery_mo...day_030915.html
http://www.astronomy-chat.com/astronomy/Th...ies_604726.html
http://home.carolina.rr.com/nirgal/buyastar.html - this is actually the page that tells the story about the angry man calling the astronomer an idiot...
http://www.ibiblio.org/ips/Starnaming.html

...and, straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak...

...the IAU's official position on naming a star...

I highly recommend the IAU link because it will answer any and all questions on the matter. I'm going to add it to my links page on my site and I encourage anyone with a website to do the same. They've written a page that's not only very informative, but also quite amusing with a few recommendations on how to show someone you really love the stars.

The IAU make it clear that any company purporting to be selling star names in conjunction with the IAU *will* be prosecuted... wahey! Anyone finding any such company should report them to the IAU. Time to put these suckers out of business.

RE the land registry thing... hadn't heard of anything with regards to Io and Titan, just the Moon and Mars, and there are a number of companies around selling those (like the stars)

The ones I've seen basically said it was a novelty item, but hey, ya never know LOL