Kudos to Lance Vaillancourt for his denigration of the International Star Registry in his column ("Diet Water: Twinkle, twinkle, buy a star") of Oct. 1. This scam has been run out of some states for its false claims, and Coloradans should be wary.

One thing this business does not tell you is that the star you "buy" is not visible without a telescope! All the ones that are visible to the naked eye have been taken. You have to have good coordinates and a telescope that can be pointed precisely to the position of the star to even have a chance of seeing "your" star. The ISR gives you the coordinates, but not the telescope.

The catalog of bright (i.e., visible) stars contains about 9,000 stars, about half in the Southern Hemisphere skies. With today's pollution (by particulates and light), most of the stars you could see (in principle) are obscured. That leaves less than 2,000 stars that can be seen from Boulder on a very clear, moonless night.

Yet the International Star Registry claims to have registered stars numbering in the millions! By far the vast majority of them are too faint to be seen.

As someone blogged on the Internet, paying to have a star named for you is like pouring money down a black hole.

Theodore Snow

Professor of astrophysics, CU

SUNDAY VOTING

The quadrennial American tradition has come upon us quickly. Mail-in ballots have just arrived for many Boulderites, and, in just two weeks, early voting will begin, starting Oct. 20 and ending Oct. 31.

Unfortunately, it seems that while early voting locations will be open on Saturday, Oct. 25, they are closed on Sunday, Oct. 26. Now this may be a reasonable schedule to keep during odd-year and mid-term elections, but one need only look back to the February caucuses to see that this is not your ordinary election.

The statewide caucuses had more than eight times the average caucus turnout: 120,000 people came out to caucus on that cold evening on Feb. 5, while in 2004, just 15,000 people did so.

Colorado has made great strides in constructing an electoral process as accessible as possible and it is in this spirit that we should consider the Sunday closures: we should all be (lower-case) democrats and favor as many opportunities to cast ballots as possible.

Scott Heiser

Boulder

EGGS AREN'T PEOPLE

Ilana Fischer is right to oppose Amendment 48, the ballot measure that would grant fertilized eggs the full legal rights of persons in the Colorado constitution ("'Personhood' bill is dangerous," Oct 5). However, the measure would do far more than just ban abortion, if passed and enforced.

Amendment 48 would make abortion first-degree murder, except perhaps to save the woman's life. First-degree murder is defined in Colorado law as deliberately causing the death of a "person," a crime punished by life in prison or the death penalty. So women and their doctors would be punished with the severest possible penalty under law for terminating a pregnancy -- even in cases of rape, incest, and fetal deformity.

Amendment 48 has very sharp teeth. By fabricating rights for fertilized eggs, the measure would grossly violate the rights of the people of Colorado. Please vote no.

Diana Hsieh

CU Ph.D candidate