In a word, no! In two more words, so what?
There seems to be some buzz among certain up-tight bloggers that star registration companies are a scam and a rip-off. Well, I guess it depends what you think you're getting. As I wrote in another blog post, the only "official" star regsitry is published by the International Astronomical Union, or IAU. It has nothing to do with NASA, and in fact NASA doesn't have anything to do with star names nd never has. The IAU catalog is the main catalog used by astronomers, and every star in it is referred to with a number, not a name - each star has exact coordinates, and then a catalog number (and there are several catalogs too!), but all the catalogs use numbers. So if you consider these catalogs to be "official", like most people do, you would still be faced with several different ways of referring to a given star - but they'd all be numbers, not names.
But I thought some stars have "real" names! What about Sirius, and Regulus, and the North Star? Well, yes, these are popular names for these bright stars, but do you think Japanese people say "The North Star"? Do you think Iranians say "Sirius", or that Maori Bushmen talk about "Regulus"? I got news for you - even these bright important stars have many, many names, and one name may be more popular and well known than another, but none of them are the "official" name. So if you name a star with a star naming company, your name isn't "official" either. So uptight people should relax a bit about that whole argument.
There seems to be some buzz among certain up-tight bloggers that star registration companies are a scam and a rip-off. Well, I guess it depends what you think you're getting. As I wrote in another blog post, the only "official" star regsitry is published by the International Astronomical Union, or IAU. It has nothing to do with NASA, and in fact NASA doesn't have anything to do with star names nd never has. The IAU catalog is the main catalog used by astronomers, and every star in it is referred to with a number, not a name - each star has exact coordinates, and then a catalog number (and there are several catalogs too!), but all the catalogs use numbers. So if you consider these catalogs to be "official", like most people do, you would still be faced with several different ways of referring to a given star - but they'd all be numbers, not names.
But I thought some stars have "real" names! What about Sirius, and Regulus, and the North Star? Well, yes, these are popular names for these bright stars, but do you think Japanese people say "The North Star"? Do you think Iranians say "Sirius", or that Maori Bushmen talk about "Regulus"? I got news for you - even these bright important stars have many, many names, and one name may be more popular and well known than another, but none of them are the "official" name. So if you name a star with a star naming company, your name isn't "official" either. So uptight people should relax a bit about that whole argument.
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