The Ras Obasi star

For those pro, and amateur astronomers out there, I'd like to give you The Ras Obasi Star.

Location

Taurus
RA 5h44m31s
D 26(degrees) 12'

My mom got it named after me for Christmas with the International Star Registry.

If you see it, think of me. I'm dead center of a city, so I can't see it yet, but I'm excited about a trip to the beach, or the country to take a look.

(BTW: The International Star Registry is not officially recognized by any scientific community as having any official ability to name stars. In the Astronomical society it doesn't mean much, but I thikn it's pretty cool anyway.)

Thanks Mom.

from wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org...


"There are commercial organisations that sell star names to the public. It is the opinion of many astronomers that such businesses are fraudulent. The names assigned by businesses are not recognised by the International Astronomical Union and have no official status. "


having said that, why doesnt the IAU offer an official naming facility for the public? it would raise a lot of money for astronomy research, and would also increase public awareness in space science.

Originally posted by Rasobasi420
(BTW: The International Star Registry is not officially recognized by any scientific community as having any official ability to name stars. In the Astronomical society it doesn't mean much, but I thikn it's pretty cool anyway.)

As I stated in the first post Netron, I know. I just thought it was a cool gift from my mom anyway. Having said that, the reason that the IAU doesn't name stars this way is because it's not feasable to look up a star in a registry with the name "John Smith" or "Happy Birthday Billie". Numbers are much more accurate.

but you could get around that problem by having two names for a star - its official scientific catalog name and its "named" name. astronomers could still use the catalog name.

i'd love to have a star named officially , forever, after me, and i wouldnt mind how faint or far away it would be. a red dwarf star would be just fine.

I'd personally have a few concerns with that scenerio.

1. If some moron starts buying star names that are absolutely rediculous, and we're stuck with it in our records forever, or

2. Let's say we find life on a planet circling a star named "Jim + Daisy 4 eva"
Then we'd be stuck.

Originally posted by Rasobasi420
I'd personally have a few concerns with that scenerio.

1. If some moron starts buying star names that are absolutely rediculous, and we're stuck with it in our records forever, or

you could have some sort of approval process, so that the name isnt ridiculous.

you could also limit the max amount of stars that a single credit card could name - this would prevent millionaires snapping up thousands of star names.

one could also introduce a market mechanism whereby ownership of starnames could be traded - rather like the way domain names are traded.

there would be a market value for a star called "deathstar" or "tatooine" say. we could, possibly, change the laws , to allow private ownership of star systems - so technically, if you bought the registration document for "tatooine" you would own that star system.

if we allowed private ownership of all star systems then star systems like Sirius would command enormous values - maybe the bidding could go into the millions. but then unknown, faint stars would be relatively cheap.

there's 400 billion stars in our galaxy, so i guess their would be plenty of room for the $1 star system.

2. Let's say we find life on a planet circling a star named "Jim + Daisy 4 eva"
Then we'd be stuck.

he - that sounds quite funny actually.

Captain Kirk: "Two to beam down to JimandDaisy Four Eva"

i guess this will boil down to trusting what the marketplace brings up. if the name is very silly, i would guess that future starship commanders would use the scientific name for the star.

but there are an AWFUL lot of stars - 400 billion in our galaxy alone.


[edit on 2-1-2007 by netron]