I meant to blog about this ages ago: I wrote an article about the star naming scam for CSICOP. It came out in their magazine, Skeptical Inquirer, back in September, but it’s online for all to read.
Bonus: you can find out my middle name by reading it. Wow!
Extra bonus backstory info: the image they printed with my star in it does not have my star in it. I gave them the image file, and what they printed kinda sorta looks like the field with my star in it, but danged if I can figure out what they did. Cropped, rotated, distorted? You be the judge. Here is the what they printed (left) next to the original image (right; click it to see a bigger version on Flickr):
If you can see their image in this then more power to you. I’m pretty good at pattern recognition (a zillion hours at the eyepiece does that to you) and I can’t do it. It just goes to show you that buying a star gets you nowhere.
