Rant - Name a Star for your loved one!

Someone brought up the topic of naming stars

Any good Skeptic will tell you that these sites where you can send in 15.00 to 25.00 or more to get a star named for a loved are scams. They are essentially stealing money from people.

And this is true. However, I don't think it should be.

The reason why this is a scam is this - the body responsible for naming stars and planets is the International Astronomical Union.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Astronomical_Union

http://www.iau.org/

The places that sell naming a star don't talk to the Astronomical Union.

The reason for that is that the Astronomical Union won't give them the time of day.

Stars and Planets are... bigger than we are. They'll be around practically forever. Naming them is important.

And the Astronomical Union is keenly aware of this.

We don't look up in the sky and wonder at the majesty of the giant planet Lulu. There's a very good reason for this.

Human beings have been pointing to and naming planets and stars since the first human realized that the stars were actually separate things and he wanted to discuss this with the next human over.

You can tell when objects were named. Stars and planets with proper names were viewed and cataloged in ancient times. They ran out of names pretty quick. Gods, devils, angels and historical figures all were used up.

I am pretty sure that some king or another pointed at Canis and said "See that one? that's my star. I own it, and I am going to live in the sky with it when I die. I'll rule there as King as I do now."

This was an intelligence test. The smart primates said "Yes, Your Majesty." and quickly scribbled "His Majesty's Star" over the name "Canis"

But this didn't last.

Since the dawn of modern astronomy, Astronomers have been cataloging objects in the sky.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_catalogue

It has become traditional to use the catalog designation for stars and objects in the sky.

This is a mark of respect for the astronomers who beat their brains out compiling the catalog (On who's work modern astronomers build)
and it avoids political problems.

The problem with this is that the proper name of J random Star is it's designation in a catalog. "Wo 9127" or something.

But worse.

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From Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy Blog

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2005/04/29/

"In fact, the star needs a name change: it's now called 2M1207A. The planet is 2M1207b (stars are upper case, planets are lower case, so that's not a typo)."
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In order to find anything in the sky - we need a system of navigation. A set of land marks and a way to describe any given object in relation to these land marks.

Astronomy has one. As with names it is based on a mix of tradition, pragmatism and technology.

I don't understand a word of the thing, but that's because I am uneducated. Ignorant.

However this leads to the proper name of J Random Star being it's catalog designation and it's address in this astronomical navigation system.

The proper name of any given stars is a bucket of letters and numbers that will make you eyes bleed if you don't have astronomical training. I can't imagine it's any fun for Astronomers to try and remember, either.

let's stop for a moment and Consider the numbers of stars...

There are about 100 billion stars in our galaxy. That's roughly five stars for every man, woman and child on earth. 2 and half for every man, woman and child who has ever lived.

If you ask a computer "Fluffy Bitbucket Smith" and "Wo 9127, 03 44 22.1, +24 46 00" are essentially the same - random strings of numbers and letters.

All we really need is for any random string of numbers and letter to be unique.

However "Fluffy Bitbucket Smith" is a designation that fits natural human pattern recognition equipment.

it doesn't disadvantage a computer any and could help an astronomer remember which star he's observing.

So my premise is that the International Astronomical Union should, in fact, adopt the scheme of selling naming rights to Stars for $10 or $15 dollars.

It helpfully assigns a string of essentially random letters to any given star.

It won't happen. IAU has a stick. And Star Naming schemes have been scams for a long time.

So professional Astronomy has a very justified, but somewhat uptight "Not invented here" reaction to Star naming scams.

Also - the people who sell such things know - they know for a fact that what they're selling is not true. No matter how much money Mister Smith pays, J Random Star will never be known as "Fluffy Bitbucket Smith" in honor of his late lap-warmer.

http://www.starregistry.com/

So the guys selling this "Service" know that they're lying to their customers. That fraud. It's stealing.

I don't want to seem to be advocating theft.

I am advocating going ahead and naming stars, asteroids, planetoids and so on after people, animals, historical events, fictional characters and so on.

And that's all I got to say about that.

Jay ~Meow!~