No. Read the order of the posts. It was aurora who originally said "For one thing, the same star has been sold by multiple companies, all doing a similar scam. "

Nobody suggested Aurora do his/her homework. That's why I say this argument is one-sided. One side can say anything they want without providing references and go unquestioned.


Why do I feel like I'm being trashed? Because people say things like:
"I really can't imagine why anyone would defend the star naming scammers" when I never defended them, and "So why are you saying that ISR's scam should be the official scam?" when I never said that either. Don't you see the attitude in your responses "Please point out the "fun" part...I seem to be missing it... "? and "you are going to have to do your own "homework".


People could be replying with answers like:
*The IAU has the authority because...

*Even though more people than just astronomers enjoy the stars, astronomers have the right to designate the official naming body because...

Then they would be addressing the questions I asked without putting words in my mouth and aiming their attitudes at me. That's why I feel like I'm being trashed.

Then how come the ISR hasn't been shut down by now? It's because there is another side to the argument. Any prosecutor knows if they tried to charge the ISR with fraud that the other side to the argument would be presented and the prosecution would lose. And keep in mind, me pointing out that another side to the argument exists is not the same as me endorsing their argument.

According to http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,49345,00.html the ISR has sold over a million star names. How many is this exactly? I don't know but it is probably fewer than 2 million or they would have said that instead. The article is 5 years old, so perhaps it is approaching 2 million by now.
In my 8 inch telescope with the 26mm eyepiece I have a field of view of about 0.4 square degrees. I can see stars down to about magnitude 10. Maybe a little fainter if I had a dark sky. When I point my telescope at a patch of sky that appears to the naked-eye as being empty, I can see at least 5 stars in each field of view. If I point my telescope at a random patch of sky, 10 stars is more likely. I can get as high as 200 stars per field of view if I point at a star cluster, or thousands if I point at a globular cluster. Or about 20 if I randomly cruise through the bright Milky Way band.
The sky contains 41253 square degrees. So there are 93,378 fields of view in the total sky. If we use 10 as an average number of stars per field of view, That's nearly 1 million stars. This suggests that they have indeed run out of stars magnitude 10 and brighter. Or perhaps they are close to running out if I use a number other than 10. But if they simply use stars as faint as mag 12, there are 10s of millions of stars at their disposal. If they run out of those, the simply swich magnitudes again. They needn't ever run out.