What Do Astronomers Think about Naming a Star?
Scientists, planetarium directors and astronomers are unified in dooming name a star services as scientifically unsuitable. Space.com alleges that your money would be better spent on a picture astronomy book than with a privately-owned business, all the same planetariums and other science non-profits have commenced star naming services because they are so popular with the public.
Why the popularity? There are two fundamental reasons:
1. The less transparent reason is that for every person who has read an article about astronomy in a book or magazine, a thousand have checked on their daily astrology reading. It’s true, most laypeople confuse astronomers and astrologers and make no distinction. Why is this? It’s because astrology is all about a human’s personalized relationship with the celestial powers. Why is this so consequential? The concept that what goes on in the stars touches on a human’s individual life history has been a component of our civilization throughout history. Johannes Kepler, who established unequivocally that the planets orbit around the Sun instead of the Earth, made his living casting horoscopes for the monarchs of Europe. So while astronomy was supplanting astrology, it was still looked at a highly reputable profession. It wasn’t until Isaac Newton started to distinguish the means by which the planets, moons, and stars affect each other in outer space via his laws of gravitation did society start to consider the stars as something else beside precursors of their life’s fate.
2. The idea that the stars carry a personal link with humans began with the Greek notion that the whole universe revolves around the Earth. If it were true that the stars rotates about the Earth, then what may happen in that universe, so one may think, surely must affect me. This is why astrology to this day delivers such a big impact on the world, particularly when it professes to prognosticate the future.
January 10th, 2010 by admin
Posted in Collectors Corner, Education Resources, Hall Of Science | Comments Off