Every year a few of our little star dome visitors proudly tell us that their parents bought them a star (i.e. paid to name a star after the child) when they were born. Although it sounds beautiful, sadly it is not true. There are indeed commercial companies offering you “to name a star (visible in your area) after someone special”. Unfortunately those companies have nothing to do with the International Astronomical Union, the organization responsible for naming astronomical objects. Therefore if you pay to name a star, you WILL get a fancy certificate, that name WILL appear on that company’s list, but the scientific community will NEVER accept it. And another such company, with their own list, will probably sell the same star to somebody else.

1. Can I buy a star?

2. How much does it cost to buy a star?
The UK based company we looked up “sells” standard
stars for £17.99, extra bright stars for £27.99 and binary
stars (obviously a popular package for weddings and
anniversaries) for £54.99. If you want a fancy gift pack
prepare to pay £39.99, £49.99 and £79.99 respectively.
Please don’t be deceived by the official look of those
companies' websites. Remember: you cannot buy a star!
So how do stars get their names?
Stars usually get alphanumeric designations (yes, that
boring combination of letters and numbers) in star
catalogs. A few hundreds of the brightest stars have
proper names as well, usually historical names or the
names of their discoverers.

3. Designations
One of the most historically significant star atlases was
published by the German astronomer Johann Bayer in
1603. Bayer cataloged stars seen with a naked eye in the
following way: he assigned each star in each constellation
a lower-case letter from a Greek alphabet, followed by the
name of the constellation. According to his
classification,“alpha” was the brightest star in the
constellation, “beta” was the second brightest etc. The
original Bayer’s atlas included about 1200 stars. Later
other astronomers improved and extended Bayer’s
catalog.
Modern star catalogs include hundreds of thousands of
stars. A star in a catalog is identified by its unique
designation, i.e. the combination of letters (they refer to
the survey) and numbers, and the star’s coordinates. The
same star will have different designations in different
catalogs.
Readers further interested in star catalogs might want to
start their research with timeline of astronomical maps,
catalogs and surveys.

4. Proper names
For centuries people looked up at the night sky and
referred to the brightest stars and other objects they saw
by the names they invented. It is no surprise than that the
same stars had different names in different cultures! We
still use many of those traditional names today. Although
to avoid the confusion astronomers had to choose out of
the very many names those that were the most historically
significant or the ones widely used by the astronomical
community. You will find the full catalog of star
names here.
Who gets to decide how to call stars?
International Astronomical Union is an organization that
includes about 13 000 professional astronomers from all
over the World. Part of the job of the Union is to decide on
the names of the celestial bodies, such as stars,
exoplanets and galaxies. A special IAU committee
called Working group on star names is responsible for
naming stars!

5. Please remember
The sky is free and the stars are for everybody to
enjoy! So
•Step outside in the evening and watch the stars!
•Visit our inflatable dome and learn about stars and
constellations using our special interactive night sky!
•Try our favorite app SkyLive and explore the sky with
their virtual planetarium. Or use the SkyLive information
about location and visibility of the celestial objects to plan
your very own observations.