Naming a Star After Someone
The most thoughtful gifts are intangible. You can give numerous clothes, jewelry and fragrances but these will only last for a given period of time. A truly timeless gift is one that is well thought of, and yes, it can last more than a lifetime. One such present is to name a star for someone special.
Can you Name a Star?
Lovers often gaze up towards the starry night and promise each other eternal love. They promise the moon and the stars and confer other 'mills and boon' inspired tributes. What if you could for once stop promising and actually deliver a star? Well, technically not 'deliver' but name a star after someone. Yes, it is possible to name a star after that someone special. Now you are probably wondering how? But let's not get ahead of ourselves, there is one little secret that you need to know before you go ahead.
If you log on to the Internet and search for this, you will find many websites claiming that you can do so for free or for a small price. We all know that nothing in this world is free, so don't just ignore a little voice in the back of your head and proceed with naming a star. Specially, if you are paying to name the star after somebody. Here is the catch, most of these names for stars are not recognized by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Yes, this is the same big fancy sounding organization that stripped Pluto off its planetary status. Why these names are not recognized is because scientists are continuously discovering and maintaining databases of stars. These star naming organizations use the same database to name the stars and many times the same star can be named by two or more organizations, in which case neither name is valid. Moreover, there is a set international procedure for naming stars. What happens when you name a star is that it gets documented in the companies' database, but the IAU doesn't recognize it. So no one other than you and your special someone will know that the star is yours.
How to Name a Star?
In some way I feel it is okay for IAU to not recognize these names, after all they name the stars numerically. These 'number names' contain a lot of information regarding the coordinates of the star. Imagine the confusion if some important star's name got changed to "sparkle". The scientists will have to do hours of search to find where exactly it is located. With that aside, if you don't really care whether the IAU recognizes your name for the star, you can very well go ahead with naming one. All you have to do is go on to a website, fill a form, pay a little for the certificate and your work is done.
I feel at the end of the day, it's the thought that counts. There are millions of twinkling lights in the sky and there is no harm in claiming one as your own. Plus the scientists can't possibly name all the stars themselves, so they might as well recognize our efforts for lending a hand, rather a name! So go ahead just name a star for that special person in your life, and let him/her know that one of the twinkling lights in the dark shiny night is twinkling only for him/her.
