IAU Warns Against Planet-Naming Contest: Scam or Misunderstanding?

If you paid to name a planet after you favorite pet, you may have been scammed. The International Astronomical Union has announced that a company that charges people to suggest names for exoplanets has no bearing on the names that the more than 800 discovered exoplanets actually receive.

Costing $4.99 per name, the company that offers the public an opportunity to name a planet states that "With your help, we're building a list of names--a baby book of names--for Astronomers to use to identify the worlds they're finding orbiting alien stars."

Unfortunately for would-be planet namers and the site, the announcement isn't true. The IAU has released a statement that stresses the importance of an organized naming process that allows researchers to keep track of all of the current exoplanets. As thousands of planets are discovered, it's crucial to keep relevant names such as 16 Cygni Bb rather than Fido or Rex.

In addition to explaining why more descriptive (although also more boring) names needed to be kept, the IAU was quick to say that any name nominations "will not lead to an officially recognized exoplanet name, despite the price paid or the number of votes accrued."

The confusing nature of the contest is perhaps unsurprising. In February, scientists who discovered Pluto's fourth and fifth moons asked the public to help name them via an online vote. The official competition could have led the public to believe that this new naming contest would actually have bearing on exoplanet names.

That's not to say that the company hosting the naming contest didn't fight back. Officials at the space-funding company, Uwingu, said that the IAU misrepresented the nature of their contest, which aims to pick a "people's choice" name rather than an official one.

"They basically said we're conducting a scam, and nothing could be further from the truth," said Uwingu CEO Alan Stern, a former NASA science chief, in an interview with Space.com. "They basically put us out of business, and they've ruined our reputation."

Whether or not Uwingu actually goes out of business, though, remains to be seen. In the meantime, it seems that you may want to save yourself a few bucks if you want to name a planet.