This thread discussed the companies that claim to name a star for a
fee:

From: "Brian Miller"
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:26:40 GMT
Local: Tues, Apr 13 2004 10:26 am
Subject: Naming a Star companies; NOT officially recognized
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...c6631bbb1cf7b8

These companies and the names they assign have no official standing:

http://www.iau.org/IAU/FAQ/starnames.html

On this page the IAU mentions they use a numbering system for stars
because it makes cataloging and finding them easier. But there are
stars that do have names such as Barnard's star.
If names *were* officially assigned to very many stars that really
would not impact astronomers research. They could still use their
numerical naming conventions in their research.
So could the IAU say offer to officially assign the name of a star in
perpetuity for say a $1000 fee? At least one of these star naming
companies claims to have had 1 million customers. At $1,000 each that
could amount to $1 billion. I'm thinking about this going strictly into
astronomy: building new telescopes, funding new space missions etc.
One problem might be suppose a couple of hundred years hence we visit
these systems. You might want to assign the name of the star to an
explorer who first visits it. Or who colonizes a planet in the system.
A more current problem is that you would have cases where someone
would want to name a star "Adolf Hitler". It would be easy to filter
out these requests. But some would not be so easy for an international
union. Would "Karl Marx" be acceptable? Would the "Josef Stalin"? There
are many other such examples.
Note also that world-wide this could conceivable be a yearly income on
this level. For a billion dollars yearly going stricly into
astronomical research I think many astronomers would accept the idea of
their favorite stars being assigned individual names.


Bob Clark