I had an interesting exchange with Christian Marois and Eric Mamajek on The FaceBook thing, and it helped clarify my thinking on the issue of the IAU naming exoplanets.

Christian mused about the ultimate source of the IAU’s authority; how it is that a subset of astronomers get to decide standards for the rest of us.  Alan Stern is on record being very very grumpy about the whole matter, especially as it relates to Pluto’s planethood and its treatment of Uwingu.

I decided that I knew of only two mechanisms of IAU authority:

1) Journal enforcement. A&A (and the AAS journals, too, I think, though I can’t find the evidence right now) requires that names conform with IAU recommendations.  This makes sense as a way to keep the literature clean and consistent.

2) The consent of the governed. The IAU has responsibly managed things like asteroid names and time conventions for a long time, and it’s more valuable for a practitioner to acquiesce to a reasonable community consensus they disagree with, than for them to set a precedent where it’s every astronomer for themself, or set up factions that use inconsistent standards and names.

Consulting discoverers on the topic of exoplanet nomenclature is consistent with past practice and a way of preserving its authority under point 2) above.  If the process is seen as the forging of a consensus among interested parties, then it will have their buy-in.  In other words, when the people whose consent matters most are the people generating the consensus, then the system works.

What might not work is if the IAU makes ill-informed decisions that leave out the voices of the people most affected by its decisions; if it is seen by astronomers not as a forum for consensus but as an unaccountable body imposing arbitrary decisions by fiat.

I think this is why I was disturbed and confused by Thierry Montmerle’s note to me that included the passage:

So, in a way, the list [of exoplanets that the IAU is naming] is “public domain”, except that no one else is allowed to use it for the moment. You can call it also a “transfer of intellectual property to the IAU”, much like the “copyright” transferred to the IAU by authors of articles appearing in its publications like Symposia.

I was first hung up on the idea that naming exoplanets somehow involves the “intellectual property” of the exoplanets, but this issue doesn’t involve any legal sense of the term I’m aware of; I think that Montmerle had a more general sense of the term in mind.

But what I think bothered Christian and I’ve realized also bothered me is the sense that the IAU has the authority to appropriate the intellectual property of any astronomer, including nonmembers. Further, it seemed that the IAU believed it could do so against the express recommendation of its own commission, on what appeared to be the whim of the General Secretary.

That sort of attitude is inconsistent with the source of the IAU’s authority, as I understand it.  That’s why I was so glad to read the response of Alain Lecavelier des Etangs, who made it clear that the IAU would seek a consensus of interested parties.  As it should be.

So why am I still neutral on the whole issue, instead of in favor of NameExoWorlds?  Because the contest seems to be outside of the IAU’s natural purview.  Asteroid names, lunar craters, and standards of time had inconsistencies across astronomy that needed unification for a global conversation to proceed efficiently.  The IAU (eventually) responsibly got the interested parties together and cleared up the confusion (as I understand things).

But with NameExoWorlds (and the Pluto thing) there isn’t any confusion in the literature^*; there is no problem in need of a solution.  Worse, the people who felt most strongly about the issues were not leading the discussions.  I think that is why the IAU is getting so much attention and pushback for these efforts, in particular.

^*There are a few planets, like those in the μ Arae system, with confusingly inconsistent designations in the refereed literature. If the IAU were simply settling those couple of disputes I’d be in favor, though it seems like small potatoes for such a big organization.

The IAU has a new planet-naming contest out, NameExoWorlds, which I also wrote about here in the context of whether the IAU would involve the discoverers of exoplanets in its process, as per its own rules set down by Commission 53.  I found the IAU’s initial response on the issue wanting — it appeared to be saying that it was going to ignore the Commission’s rule.

To recap, IAU Commission 53, partly in response to Uwingu’s exoplanet naming contest, laid down rules for the sort of contest that it would be willing to endorse officially.  Anything that charged anyone was right out (sorry Uwingu), and Rule 6 stated:

the process must be respectful of intellectual property: it must have the formal agreement of the discoverers, who may participate in the process

I was pleased to read this rule when it was written, but always thought it would be very difficult to get a name approved because of it.  There are lots of complications about who, exactly, a “discoverer” is.

For instance, I am a late co-author on the refereed paper announcing 55 Cancri f, but I would hardly call myself a discoverer of it, and it seems silly that anyone should need my “formal agreement” to name that planet.  But who should get “veto power”?  Just Debra Fischer?  The first four authors?  To complicate things, Jack Wisdom presented evidence for the f component in the previously published Keck data for 55 Cancri in a poster at a DPS meeting 3 years earlier.  Who decides whether the IAU needs Jack’s “formal agreement” to name that planet?

The list of complications go on.  HD 2092458 b, the first known transiting planet, was announced in papers submitted on the same calendar day by two different groups (on either side of the daily submission cutoff — that’s why Henry’s paper has a submission date one day prior to Charbonneau’s paper.  I have a write-up with Scott Gaudi about these heady days of discovery here).  The planet was first detected, though, not by its transits but by radial velocities, independently by the Geneva and California teams, who are co-authors on the two papers.  So I would say this planet has 8 discoverers; others might argue for just Greg Henry.  Who decides who gets to require their “formal agreement”?

And this doesn’t even get into cases where the first refereed paper is not by the group that discovered a planet, who announced it by press release but never published.  Who draws that line?

Then, once we decide who the “discoverers” are, what does “formal agreement” mean?  Do they all have to agree?  A majority?  How do we count abstentions?

So I foresaw that Rule 6 would be a high hurdle to clear.  I was surprised, then, that the IAU seemed to be ready to ignore it when it came to its own contest, which would make naming these planets considerably easier.

Well, Thierry Montmerle put me in touch with Alain Lecavelier des Etangs, the president of Commission 53, who assured me that the IAU is considering these issues and taking them seriously (I don’t want to quote his email directly without formal written permission, so I will give my understanding of it instead).

He assured me that the IAU does recognize and respect the intellectual property of the discovers (which is not how I would frame the issue, but has the same effect).  He wrote it would be the Exoplanets for the Public Working Group (which includes some discoverers) that will contact the discoverers once the contest enters its final phase.

I specifically asked Dr. Lecavelier des Etangs who would deal with the complex issues I outline above, and he told me it would be the Executive Committee, which includes both exoplanet experts and people with nomenclature experience from the Solar System community.  He told me that the IAU would be following Commission 53’s guidance, which recommended using the timestamp of submission to a refereed journal to establish discovery priority (and he acknowledged the difficulties such a rule would bring up for 209485b).

Finally, he told me that he hopes to get consensus and approval from all of the discoverers so that the issues of vetoes I brought up earlier does not have to even be addressed.  I agree that would be best for all involved.

In the last round, I personally found the original statement by the IAU about naming exoplanets wanting, and the Commission 53 clarification (here and here) thoughtful and satisfactory.  I feel the same way this time around.

The IAU has a new planet-naming contest out, NameExoWorlds.

First, I have to say this looks an awful lot like Uwingu’s planet naming contest, which was subject to withering scorn from many quarters.   Some (in unlinkable Facebook posts, which I can’t even find now) pointed out that Uwingu’s scheme was unfair because it excluded most of humanity from its contest by making the contest in English, cost money, and Web-based (since many or most people don’t have regular WWW access).   As I recall, one commenter stated that since the exoplanets are the shared heritage of all of humanity, it was inappropriate for a subset of humanity to name them.  The IAU scheme is free, but their site is (currently) English-only and Web-only, so those criticisms apply here, too.

The IAU itself protested Uwingu’s project on the grounds that Uwingu was misleading people into thinking its names would be “official” (debatable) and that it was charging for both nominations and votes (true).

The IAU’s contest is distinguished from Uwingu’s in four important ways:

• Nominations and votes are free; no money is being raised for anything
• The IAU is officially sanctioning these names, the way it does, say, asteroid names
• Groups like Uwingu can participate in principle (apparently), but in practice Uwingu itself is excluded because it not non-profit and it charges for nominations and votes.
• The IAU doesn’t have the permission of the discoverers.

Recall, Uwingu got permission and blessing from Xavier Dumusque, discoverer of alpha Centauri B b, in its naming contest for that planet.  One would think the IAU would want to do the same, especially after the IAU Commission 53 wrote this about exoplanet-naming schemes (to my applause):

the process must be respectful of intellectual property: it must have the formal agreement of the discoverers, who may participate in the process

Apparently, this rule, written by the IAU, does it not apply to the IAU.  I’m not being facetious — I asked.  Here is what IAU General Seceretary Thierry Montmerle told me (on the record):

This sentence applied to organizations submitting their own process (PR of Aug. 12, 2013), it has been copied here but is not applicable. The IAU is handling this part, and this sentence will be deleted.

I wonder what the members of Commission 53 think about this.  I was also curious about how the IAU decided who the “discoverers” were (before I was told that it doesn’t matter, because their permission isn’t needed).  I was told:

Actually, one of the reasons for offering “old” exoplanets for naming is precisely that the discovery rights may indeed be controversial because of the multiplicity of teams -and their size in the case of space missions, in particular. So, in a way, the list given is “public domain”, except that no one else is allowed to use it for the moment. You can call it also a “transfer of intellectual property to the IAU”, much like the “copyright” transferred to the IAU by authors of articles appearing in its publications like Symposia.

I don’t understand this at all, but there you are.

Anyway, I appreciate that the IAU is seriously promoting public interest in astronomy, especially exoplanets, and I’m not opposed to a naming scheme like this (I wasn’t particularly bothered by Uwingu’s, either).  I do wonder, though, if it ever would have bothered without Uwingu leading the way.

That said, I do find it untoward that the IAU is ignoring its own Commission 53 and the wishes of the discoverers of these exoplanets.  I hope Commission 53 weighs in on the subject publicly, the way it did the last time the IAU moved ahead on the subject without it.

The IAU has decided that it is going to officially name exoplanets in a worldwide contest.  You can find the details here:The way this will apparently work is that non-profit groups (but not individuals) will be able to register for an opportunity to nominate names starting in September.  It is unclear from the rules if all groups will be accepted, or how the IAU will decide which groups are eligible.

The following month, these groups will “vote for the 20–30 top ExoWorlds they wish to name,” with the exact number depending on the number of groups that sign up (the IAU is anticipating thousands will).  It’s not clear to me if this means that the groups must hold a vote among their members, or if their list of 20-30 planets constitutes their “vote”.

The groups must choose from a list the IAU has compiled of the first 300 or so exoplanets discovered (including Wolszczan’s pulsar planets, “Latham’s planet,” 51 Peg b, Hd 209458 b, epsilon Eridani b, and many others, listed here).

In December, these groups will contribute names for these planets and their host stars.  The names must conform to the rules put down by Commission 53 (which I comment on here), except for one rule which is being ignored (see the next post).

In March of next year the general public will be allowed to vote on Zooniverse on these planet names, provided they register first.  The IAU anticipates a million votes or more.

In July of next year, the IAU, via its Executive Committee Working Group on the Public Naming of Planets and Planetary Satellites will validate the winning names.

At the IAU meeting in Honolulu, the IAU will announce the winning names.

Next up: my thoughts.