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

242 BEAM ME UP
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
you really want to buy a star from them?
PPP
Perhaps, after all this, it’s time for me to come clean. I’ll admit
here that I have “my own” star. Many years ago my brothers
bought it from the ISR and gave it to me as a birthday gift. That
star—named Philip Cary Plait—is located in the constellation of
Andromeda, and is about 100 times too faint to be seen with the
unaided eye.
I lost the original certificate for the star years ago and out of
curiosity I called the ISR to see if they could tell me where the star
is. They were surprised; evidently, and ironically, it was one of the
first stars sold by the company in their first year of business, but
they were able to give me its coordinates. They were not very
accurate but I was able to find it on a digital star map, which can
be seen in the photograph.
Can you spot it? It’s the one in the center. You can see there
are many other stars in that field, including a lot that are brighter.
None can be seen with the unaided eye, by the way. The kicker
is that “my” star already has a name—BD+48º 683. For about
130 years this designation has been catalogued in the German Bonner
Durchmusterung catalog used by practically every astronomer