A Star Named: Find the real star that was above them when they passed

Hi Product Hunt 👋 I built A Star Named because of a question I asked as a kid. My grandfather spent his life as a funeral director — helping other families say goodbye. When he died, I asked my dad where Grandpa had gone. He looked up and said, "He's up there, in the stars." Years later I learned that nobody can prove that. But I learned something else: if you know the exact date, time and place someone died, you can rebuild the night sky of that moment — precisely — and find the real star that was directly overhead. So that's what the site does. You enter the moment and place; it computes the zenith and returns the nearest real star from the HYG catalog (107,838 real stars). You get coordinates you can check in any sky-chart app, a print-ready certificate, and a 3D sky you can return to on the nights you miss them. One tier, $19.99, digital only — nothing shipped. Two honest notes: the naming is a memorial, not an official registration — the IAU recognizes no commercial naming, and we print that line on every certificate. And the star is chosen for being closest to overhead, not for being brightest. The free preview shows the sky of your moment before you pay anything. It works for people and for pets. I'd love your feedback — especially whether the "moment" framing holds up. — Dominic

Forum Threads

p/a-star-named

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19d ago

You can't really name a star. We print that on every certificate.

Every star-naming service sells the same truth: the star is real, the name is not official. Most bury that in an FAQ. We're doing the opposite the line "this naming is not recognized by the IAU" is printed on every certificate we issue.

The bet: in a category with a public trust problem, honesty is the differentiator, not the liability. So the product competes on something checkable instead: we compute the star from the exact date, time and place someone passed away, so the constellation isn't picked it's determined by that moment's sky. Same input, same star, forever.

Two questions for this forum:

1. In emotional product categories memoref-adjacent does radical disclosure help,or does it kill the moment people are actually buying?

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