I'm actually the only astronomer in my family. My wife is much bigger into swimming and fish. She loves the water - it actually holds a special place in her heart.
For our tenth anniversary last year, I decided to do something special to show how much I love her. We got into the car, and drove out to Santa Cruz. I walked the family out to the beach and declared:
"The Pacific Ocean shall now and evermore be known as the Lynn Ocean!"
I then typed it nicely in a bound notebook and sent it off to the library of congress asking them to file it as a book submission.
There. The Ocean is now the Lynn Ocean.
If the above strikes you as ludicrous, it should. The Pacific Ocean is now the Lynn Ocean just as officially as a star is the "bob star". These outfits are rip offs that completely hide the validity of what they are doing in double-talk and mumbo-jumbo. If you are contributing to this illusion then you need to get comfortable with that.
I would also suggest you may find the majority of the people in the real Astronomy community against you.
And yes, this is a better conversation for CalAstro.
Pete
PS: The Local Santa Cruz government also got pretty pissed at me for putting up the sign :-)
-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Thurmond [mailto:thurmond@No-Spam]
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 10:58 AM
To: scas@No-Spam
Cc: EAS list; TAC
Subject: [TAC] Re: [scas] Hunting the dead poodle star
Jane,
While I agree that companies should be more up front about the fact
that astronomers won't start using the name they selected for a star, a
similar thing happened to me recently that gave me some perspective on
buying stars.
A local art magazine here in New Mexico published an article on my
astrophotography. I received a call from a man who had purchased a
star for his wife and wanted a picture of it. It is a magnitude 12.4
star in Andromeda. I explained to him what sort of picture I can take,
and we agreed on a price. The astronomy gods let me have the picture,
low in the west just after sunset. That's unusual because the wind or
clouds usually mess up that part of the sky for me. Anyway I got the
picture and made a nice 8x10 color print in the darkroom and sold it to
him.
After finishing the exposure, I put in the eyepiece and took a look. A
12.4 isn't a real impressive star, even in a C14, but sure enough it's
there, and at least in Jesse's mind, it belongs to his wife. So I'm
left with two impressions, buying a star is a sweet thing to do for
your sweetie, and it's good for my business. And I'm sure the company
that bought the star is right now beaming a message in that direction
to the occupants of that solar system saying "GET OFF".
If your contact wants a beautiful 8x10 color photo of her poodle's
star, with about a 1/2 degree field, I'm at thurmond@No-Spam
--Rick Thurmond
www.coyoteskies.com