Many stars are loaded down with a half-dozen or more obscure designations. Only a very rare few are named after individuals; van Maanen’s star or Barnard’s star are examples of those. These typically are special stars, like ones that are particularly close by or that have an unusually high velocity through the Galaxy. They’re usually named after the astronomer who discovered their unusual properties. One star, Cor Coroli, is an exception — it’s named after the heart of King Charles II, who patronized astronomy in the 1600s.
Not all of us are so lucky. Getting a star named after you is a very rare event.
Of course, the companies trying to sell stars would have you believe differently. You, too, can be immortalized in the heavens… if you believe their ads. Some are interesting indeed, claiming that astronomers will actually use the name you choose for the star. I’ll let you in on a secret, as an astronomer: we don’t. Many of us aren’t particularly fond of the alphabet-soup names we use, but it’s better than using the name “John Q. Public,” and we don’t have to change what we call a star because some company phones us to say that someone new has signed up for their “service.”
The bottom line is, despite any claims by these companies, the name you give a star is just that: a name you give it. It isn’t official and has no validity within the scientific community.
Now really, if all you care about is sending a unique gift to someone, and you like the fancy certificate, that’s fine. But in their ads, many of these companies don’t go out of their way to say that the names aren’t
Perhaps the most well-known star naming company is the International Star Registry (ISR). They claim to be the first company to sell star names, as if this gives them more of a foothold in the industry. Perhaps it does. Their web site claims they have sold hundreds of thousands of stars, and at $50 to $100 or so a pop you can do the math. The company isn’t going broke.
They run a lot of ads on the radio. They used to claim that the star name you choose will go into a book in the Library of Congress and be printed in a book stored in a bank vault in Switzerland. In a sense, the former claim is true: any copyrighted material gets stored in the Library of Congress if it is registered by the claimant. The ISR is able to copyright their catalogs; a copyright is something you can buy on your own if you like. And if you have the cash to store a book in a Swiss vault, more power to you. This doesn’t mean a whole lot as far as star names go, despite the ads.
So don’t always believe what you hear. The New York City Office of Consumer Affairs certainly didn’t. They levied a violation against the ISR for using deceptive advertising in New York City, with potential fines totaling up to $3,500 (a tiny fraction of the company’s income). The Library of Congress pressured the ISR from citing the Library in the ISR’s ads, and evidently they complied; the Library is no longer mentioned.
The astronomical community had something to say as well. You might think that astronomers wouldn’t really care about this practice, since it doesn’t directly affect them. Unfortunately, it can, and in a very emotional way. Consider this: Robert Martino, assistant director of the Perkins Observatory at Ohio Wesleyan University, points out that many people buy star names for friends or relatives who have died. He personally has had at least four groups of people at different times come to him and ask to see the star they named after their dead loved one. How does an astronomer tell a grieving person that the star doesn’t really possess that name? Most astronomers don’t; they point the telescope and swallow their anger.
Martino, however, finally reached his limit. He had faced too many grieving families, so he put up a scathing web page on the observatory web site about star naming. In the year 2000 the ISR retaliated.
According to Martino, the ISR put quite a bit of legal pressure on the observatory, which does not have a lot of money. Martino took down his page, although he was unhappy about it. Martino says nothing on his site was untrue. Just unflattering.
Martino also notes that the ISR was never directly indicated anywhere on his page. There was, however, a link at the bottom of the page about the New York City case, which did mention the ISR. Apparently, according to Martino, that was still too much for the company, which again contacted the university, warning them that the web site should not talk about star naming
However, it didn’t end there. Martino took down the web page but he was still incensed. He made his opinion clear on the Internet through various mailing lists and bulletin boards. Martino says the ISR once again contacted the university and insisted they wanted Martino to cease talking about them, claiming that Martino was representing himself as a spokesman for the university. This claim, Martino says, has “no basis whatsoever,” and that his comments were made on his own time, using his private Internet account through his own Internet provider, and that the university had nothing to do with it. Still, the university sent Martino a letter making it clear that he’d better stop talking about them. Martino wound up moving the whole page about star naming to his private web site, where you can still find it at http://home.columbus.rr.com/starfaq.
Martino does extract some small amount of satisfaction, though. His new star-naming web page gets far more traffic than it did before the ISR contacted him. Evidently the publicity woke up other astronomers and they now link to his page as well.
I’ll note that Martino has a daughter named Celeste: she is named after the stars and not the other way around.
For their part, the ISR must be aware that many people buy stars as memorials; they have partnered with the Cancer Research Campaign, a company in the United Kingdom that raises money for cancer research. It’s certainly understandable to do something to honor those who have died, especially family members. However, it might be better to donate money directly to a charitable organization, even more so if it’s an organization promoting something about which you feel strongly.
Incidentally, on three separate occasions over the course of many weeks I called the ISR asking for comments on this situation, and even sent them a written letter. I also tried to get the university’s side of the story. However, as of the time of this writing I have not received a reply from either of them.
The best thing to say is probably, “Caveat emptor.” If you go in with your eyes open, understanding that star-naming is all completely unofficial, maybe there’s no harm done. However, judging from stories I’ve heard from astronomers at planetaria and observatories, when most visitors ask to see “their” star, they don’t understand that these companies are not official in any way. As the city of New York found, many of their ads really are deceptive.
Ironically, the ISR’s knowledge of astronomy could be better. The Australia-New Zealand office of the ISR has a web page (http://www.starregistry.com.au) where you can order a star name and find out more about the company. They have a “Frequently Asked Questions” page, and on it is the following gem:
Question: What happens if my star falls out of the sky?
Answer: If this should happen, and came to our attention, we would most certainly name a new star for that person at our expense.
Usually, these FAQs are paraphrases of real questions, and it wouldn’t surprise me if people asked this particular question. But a company that sells star names and makes all sorts of claims about astronomy should really understand the difference between a star in the sky and a shooting star, which is just another name for a meteor. Meteors have nothing at all to do with stars (see chapter 15 for more information about shooting stars). If an actual star fell out of the sky, we’d have bigger problems on our hands than finding a new star to hang a name on.
This same web site also claims there are 2,873 stars visible to the naked eye; in reality, there are more like 10,000 (depending on sky conditions). Besides being too small, that figure is awfully precise. How do they know it’s not 2,872 stars, or 2,880? Using overly precise numbers sounds to me like another way to make them seem more scientific than they really are. If the ISR doesn’t understand even the most basic properties of visual astronomy, do
