✦ Our Story
The Sky Has Always Been
a Place for Names
Since ancient times, humans have looked up at the stars and told stories. We've named them after heroes, animals, gods, and the people we love. Named Light Star Registry continues that tradition — giving you a way to make the night sky feel personal.
What We Do
Named Light Star Registry lets you assign a name to a real, catalogued star and receive a beautifully printed certificate documenting it. Every star in our registry is drawn from the HYG Astronomical Database — a scientifically compiled catalog of over 100,000 real stellar objects with verified coordinates, distances, and spectral data.
When you name a star through us, you receive a PDF certificate immediately by email, a printed and mailed certificate on premium stock, and a permanent registry page at a unique URL that displays your star's full astronomical data — its constellation, distance in light years, coordinates, spectral class, and your personal dedication.
The Astronomy Behind It
Our star catalog is built on the HYG Database, a widely used resource that combines data from the Hipparcos Space Astrometry Mission, the Yale Bright Star Catalogue, and the Gliese Catalogue of Nearby Stars. Each star in our system has a verified right ascension, declination, distance measurement, apparent magnitude, and spectral classification.
When you choose a constellation, you're choosing a real region of the sky. When your certificate lists coordinates like RA 05h 34m 32.0s · Dec +22° 00' 52.1", those are the actual numbers an astronomer would use to find your star with a telescope.
Stars assigned through the Select and Premium tiers are drawn from 30 curated constellations — familiar, recognizable groupings like Orion, Lyra, Andromeda, and Cassiopeia. Classic tier assignments draw from the full catalog.
What Makes a Good Gift
Named Light Star Registry works well as a gift because the product is both personal and permanent. The registry page lives at a fixed URL forever. The printed certificate is something you can frame. The coordinates are real enough that someone could, with a decent telescope, actually go find the star.
It's a popular choice for memorials (naming a star for someone who has passed), births, weddings and anniversaries, and as a gift for someone who genuinely has everything else.
A Note on Official Recognition
We believe in being straightforward: star naming through Named Light Star Registry is a novelty and commemorative service. The names recorded in our registry are not recognized by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), NASA, or any other official astronomical organization.
The IAU is the only body with authority to officially name stars and celestial objects. The roughly 300 stars with official proper names — Sirius, Vega, Betelgeuse — were assigned through that process and are not in our assignable pool.
What we offer is a personal registry: a permanent, well-documented record that a real star at specific coordinates carries a name that means something to you. That's worth something, even if it isn't official.