Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from ...

238 BEAM ME UP
out quickly, and so numbers are used after that. John Flamsteed
was a seventeenth-century astronomer who catalogued thousands
of stars, and many still bear his name. Over 300,000 fainter ones
are listed in the German Bonner Durchmusterung catalog and bear
the initials “BD” before a number representing their coordinates.
Thousands of stars are in the Henry Draper catalog, named in
honor of an astronomer who was among the first to use the new
tool of spectroscopy in the 1870s (and who also took the first photograph
of the Orion Nebula, 84 years to the day before I was
born). These stars have the letters “HD” in front of a number representing
their position on the sky.
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