Register or Name Your Own Star for Free
I received a random email from one of you (’regnierericd’) this morning. It was one of those ‘Name a Star’ things. I was a little leery, so I passed it off to the best Bad Astronomer I know. Phil wrote back:
Hey, nifty! I like this, they aren’t a scam like the International Star Registry. I’ll have to promote this, and maybe talk to them. There’s more they can do…
For example, I looked up your star on SIMBAD, a database of astronomical objects. I found out it’s a K0 star, meaning it’s a little cooler than the Sun (maybe 4000 Kelvins). I don’t know if it’s a normal star like the Sun or if it’s a giant; I couldn’t find that info. But if it’s a main sequence (normal) star like the Sun, it’s a little less massive (about 0.8 times the Sun’s mass) and smaller (radius = 0.85 Sun). Those numbers are rough.
The distance was a bit tougher; it’s never been measured for this star. But knowing what kind of star it is and how bright it is, I can estimate the distance as 100 parsecs, or about 325 light years (again, if it’s a normal star). There are about a million stars within a sphere centered on the Sun and 100 parsecs across, just so’s you know.
The designation they gave it isn’t quite right. It’s SAO 5615, where that stands for Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. It has lots of names, but that’s as good as any.
I also went to a server that generates star field images from real digitized sky surveys. The image is attached; your star is the faint one in the exact center. :-)
Enjoy!
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11 Comments
stryper2000
March 10th, 2008
at 8:00pm
interesting, I think theres a catalog that sells space on the oceanic plates on the globe, I’m guessing next is Name your cloud???,
GranitW
March 10th, 2008
at 9:25pm
As far as I know, and what many astronomers I know say, these are completely pointless. Although you could have your own star, in a sense, it’s never truly yours. Also none of the databases from all these companies are joined together in anyway at all. This means there can be multiple people that own one star.
At this point the International Astronomical Union does not promote the idea of owning a star, or even keep record of this data. So pretty much, you get a completely useless certificate.
mbonzo
March 11th, 2008
at 12:25am
Chris… I didn’t find a link to the website anywhere in the post, you might want to add that. I did manually type it in from the image though. Can’t wait to try it out!
Kevin Cupp
March 11th, 2008
at 5:38am
Cool, Chris! I had a girlfriend that gave me one of those once. It was from the International Star Registry; came with a certificate and a map of where the star is. Kind of makes me wonder if all these different star-naming organizations overlap each other in the naming.
computrout
March 11th, 2008
at 7:42am
Thanks for the link. I went ahead and registered a star, and then forwarded the link to some friends.
Computrout
Wayne
March 11th, 2008
at 9:17am
So, what’s the link??!?
Carol's Corner
March 11th, 2008
at 1:57pm
I was over atChris Pirillo’s websitetoday and saw his post about this new site that lets you register stars for free, so I went over and tried it out. Yes if you want to specify more info about your star you will end up paying but still way less then other places charge. The site is
Jim Lunsford’s Lunsford Land » Welcome
March 11th, 2008
at 1:58pm
I received a random email from one of you (’regnierericd’) this morning. It was one of those ‘Name a Star’ things. I was a little leery, so I passed it off to the best Bad Astronomer I know.”Register or Name Your Own Star for Free ~ Chris Pirillo
Robert Milligan
March 11th, 2008
at 7:02pm
I think this is great. Think I will go get one named for me too.
++Duwayne peters
March 16th, 2008
at 10:40pm
Hey Chris,This would be great.I would like to do this for my wife but to pay what they ask for a certificate that is worth nothing is not what i want to do.
P.S. do you play WoW with Opal,Katta, wold and Denemrah?
Alex
January 9th, 2009
at 1:03pm
To matthew from Alex