Scientists, astronomers and planetarium directors are generally agreed in reprobating star naming as scientifically irrelevant. Space.com states that your money will be better spent on an astronomy book than on a novelty gift, yet planetariums and other scientific non-profits have taken up name a star programs because they are so popular with the public. Why do star naming services have such popularity? There are a couple of reasons:
1. The least apparent is that for each person who might seen an article about astronomy in a book or magazine, a thousand have read their astrology reading for the day. Startling but true, most laypeople mix up astrologers with astronomers and make no distinction. Why is this? Because astrology talks about a person’s physiological relationship with the heavens. Why is this so important? The feeling that what occurs in the stars touches on a person’s individual life has been a character of human culture for as long as we know. During the time that astronomy was superseding astrology, it was still looked at a very estimable profession. It was not until Sir Isaac Newton started to trace the fashion by which the planets, moons, and stars affect one another in outer space by means of his laws of gravitation did society start to consider the stars as something else besides precursors of their individual fate.
2. The notion that the stars induce a personal connectedness with people begun with the Greek concept that the entire universe revolves around the Earth. If the universe revolves about the Earth, then what might happen in that universe, so one may suppose, surely must impact me. That is why star divination to this day causes such a wide affect on the populace, especially when it pretends to forecast the future.
