Question: Is there any part of your job that you find difficult ?

Colin Johnston answered on 11 Nov 2014:

Yes, there is.

There are companies who you can pay to name a star for you. In return you get a certificate and the co-ordinates of a star picked by the company. Now you can’t actually do this, all the named stars have names which are hundreds of years old, and can’t be changed. These companies do say in their fine print that this is completely unofficial and just for fun. They also pick very dim stars which don’t already have names.

Why is this difficult for me? Well, there are many people who use these companies to name stars after loved ones who have died. Very often, people like this call on me to show them the star named after their dead baby or wife or mother. This is very hard as their star is always so dim you would need a giant telescope to see it and sometimes the star cannot be seen from Ireland. Sometimes the people are deeply upset too. This is very difficult for me as I do not want to tell a grieving family that it is impossible to see their star. I normally try to find a photo of the star and tell them anything else I can discover about it. It’s the least pleasant part of my job.