What Is a Real Star?
You are not buying a name — you are buying a star that really exists and can be verified in catalogs and telescopes.
A real star is an object from a genuine astronomical catalog (HYG, merged from Hipparcos, Gliese, Yale and others): real coordinates, real distance, really up there in the night sky. The name is a memorial gesture — the IAU does not recognize commercial naming, and we do not hide that.
The star is not "registered" to you
Astronomically, stars cannot be registered like domain names. The IAU is the only body that officially names celestial objects, and it recognizes no commercial naming service. What we offer is: a real star plus a lasting memento of it — a name, a certificate, a 3D star page. The sentiment is real; we do not pretend to sell naming rights.
How a star’s position is fixed
- Catalog ID
- e.g. HIP 49669 (Regulus), printed on the certificate and traceable anywhere
- Coordinate precision
- Precise to fractions of a degree — enough for an amateur telescope
Every star carries right ascension (RA) and declination (Dec) in the J2000 epoch — the common language of observatories. The coordinates come from parallax measurements by missions like Hipparcos, and convert into light-year distances. In other words, you can find your star in any planetarium app by typing its coordinates.
Is it worth it? (the honest version)
If what you want is an institutionally recognized naming right, do not buy — we cannot provide that, and nobody can. If what you want is a place in the sky for someone who has passed — visible, verifiable, revisitable in 3D for years to come — that is hard to replace.