Excuse me?

Alright, it's pronounced "Astron ek Andreas" and means "Andrew's Star". Which Andrew? Well - me actually! My wife, the lovely Clare, registered this star in my name at the International Star Registry (see note below) for my thirtieth birthday just gone! The formerly clumsily-named Cygnus RA20h05m55.67s-D30deg.19' is now named after me!

So where is it then? Well, first of all it's only magnitude 11.5, which means you'll need a clear night and a pretty decent telescope to see it. The map opposite leaves off a lot of stars, and the only way to get a proper fix on it would be to have a telescope capable of latching on to the specific co-ordinates in the sky (given in its 'official' name). But the map to the right shows the bright stars in Cygnus - The Swan - and the red dot tucked below the body is roughly where 'my' star is. Cygnus is almost circumpolar in Britain: that is, it stays above the horizon most of the year.Deneb is a bright first-magnitude star and the most distinctive one of the constellation. The most interesting thing in Cygnus in my opinion is quite close to my star, and you'll never see it even though it's marked on the chart with a ring: Cygnus X-1 was the first object in the sky to be confirmed as a black hole. If you're wondering what the Greek letters mean, the major stars in every constellation are given the letters of the Greek alphabet in order of brightness. Deneb can also be called "Cygnus Alpha" therefore. Mine's far too feeble a star to appear in the first 24 so its official name includes its co-ordinates.

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A note for those interested. There's nothing "official" about this at all. As far as proper astronomers are concerned, this star's name remains "Cygnus RA20h05etc.etc". It's a marketing ploy more than anything on behalf of the International Star Registry - but who cares, it's a good one. Put it this way, if Deneb can be called both Deneb and Cygnus Alpha, I'm sure my star can cope with two names as well - and should it ever go supernova, you can bet I'll be ringing the papers letting them know just who has a reasonable claim on "Andrew's Star", and it's in writing with the International Star Registry, no matter how much the astronomers will splutter.

Anyway, I thought it was a fantastic present from a fantastic person and that's all that matters.