Astronomy Blog

Buying exoplanet names?

I awoke early today for travel reasons and in the process noticed quite a few comments online about an International Astronomical Union (IAU) press release. The IAU is the main international standards body for astronomy and they have said that you can't buy an exoplanet name. This statement matches their stance on the commercial naming of stars and is part of their general policies on naming astronomical objects. This latest statement seems to be considered controversial and that, itself, is interesting.

Most astronomers (IAU members or not) are agreed that the names of stars and other astronomical bodies are not for sale and should be agreed upon. This is mostly to avoid the confusion from any one object getting lots of different proper names† or the same name as something else. After centuries of Roman/Greek/Arabic/Shakespearean bias it is also to ensure that all the world's cultures are represented in the names not just those favoured by Europeans‡.

The current controversy appears to be due to Uwingu which ran a competition to suggest names for planets. Uwingu is run by planetary scientist Alan Stern who is the principal investigator for the exciting New Horizons mission to Pluto. I was aware that the competition existed (and that William Shatner campaigned to get his name suggestion to win) but hadn't realised, until reading Ian O'Neill's article, that it required payment to take part in the poll. Aside from the biases of X-factor-style popularity contests, I also worry about the financial aspect even though the money goes to the admirable goal of funding planetary science and outreach. Even at USD 0.99, this system inherently favours names preferred by those living in the richer parts of the world such as Europe and North America. This just seems to reassert the cultural dominance of those regions.

I wasn't taking all this too seriously until I saw the comments from Alan Stern who equates the IAU to a "15th Century European academic club" and states that the IAU "claim that they own the Universe". The IAU don't own the Universe. They are simply an international standards body much like the ITU. We can choose (as astronomers) to either follow internationally approved polices or not. Following them provides some form of consistency making finding particular objects in academic papers and databases easier. Given Alan Stern's previous vocal criticism of the IAU (which I hear about via Laurel Kornfeld) over Pluto becoming a dwarf planet, it looks like some of that may be mixed up in this. Either way, as I've previously said, I am in favour of more varied exoplanet names.

† Currently stars can have one proper name but also be in many different catalogues with different IDs. Thankfully, most of the catalogues follow different naming conventions meaning that the IDs are mostly unique between catalogues and can be matched up for the purposes of efficiently mining the astronomical literature/data.

‡ These days, each type of astronomical body has a different naming

convention. Comets get the name of their discoverer(s). Asteroids often

take the names of scientists, astronomy communicators and celebrities.

The (dwarf) planets found in our solar system in recent years have taken

the names of creation gods from various cultures. Prominent mountains

on other planets also have a naming process. There is (was?) even a

committee (which, I note, was split 50/50 between Americans and Russians

at the IAU general assembly in 2000) to decide the names of craters.

This standards-body-based method of naming has been going on for the

best part of 100 years.

Observatory Drive

I'm currently in Australia's Gold Coast on holiday. Today, in a cafe, I overheard someone mention a road called Observatory Drive. I'm not aware of an observatory in this part of Australia so I'm not sure how it got the name. Looking on a map I noticed that it is surrounded by other streets sharing the theme so perhaps one of the developers had an interest in astronomy. I found Palomar Street, Leiden Street, Lowell Street, Molongolo Close, Parkes Court and Jodrell Court all named after famous astronomical observatories. There are some other space themed streets in the same area. See how many you can spot.

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This isn't the only space-themed cluster of streets in this part of Queensland. A couple of miles north west of this patch you'll find another group consisting of Milky Way, Eclipse Court, Constellation Crescent, Equinox Court, Sun Court, and Twilight Drive.

Origami Antenna

A friend gave me a "Space Origami" set for Christmas. Tonight I decided to try it out. Here is my attempt to make a radio telescope (with a stellar background).

Ten hundred words of science

A while back XKCD created a comic called "Up-goer 5". It was about the Saturn V but with explanations using only the thousand most used English words. Inspired by that comic, Theo Sanderson is asking that people describe their research in the same way.

Quite a few astronomers have already taken part. For example:

• Nicole Gugliucci likes to "write and talk about stars on the computer place";
• Leo thinks about "how space and time move when we change the picture";
• Katie Mack asks "what the dark stuff is made of";
• Ryan says why "stars that burn in a huge way are very important for us to learn about because they tell us how big everything in the sky really is";
• Keri Bean uses "space buses on a big, cold red rock in space to take pictures of the rocks and the sky";
• Chris Tibbs says how it "would be easier to see the oldest light if it wasn’t for all the other light that comes from the many many large groups of stars that also fill the entire sky";
• Emily Lakdawalla says "tiny animals can live when big sky rocks hit them".

There are plenty more examples there. If you'd like to take the ten hundred word challenge, it is easy to submit. The hard part is to keep your language simple.

Imbalance

Last week, some tweets during the BBC's Stargazing Live got me to thinking about the demographics of astronomers.

The tweets I saw were about the "Down To Earth" shows being dominated by men (typically 2 male hosts, 2 male guests and 1 female guest). Aside from the fact I hated people using the word "token" (which has negative connotations about ability) to describe the individuals who were experts in their respective fields, the under-representation of women in science and technology shows does need to be addressed. First some stats.

As in many fields, women are under-represented in astronomy. The UK membership of the IAU was 12.6% female in 2012. IAU membership quite possibly has a bias towards certain age groups so I found the Royal Astronomical Society figures for those in permanent jobs. At the senior professor level, in 2010, only 7% were women. That's rubbish. This goes up to 28% amongst lecturers. Weighting the RAS figures by the number of people employed at each level gives ~20% of those in permanent positions as women. STFC says that in 2009 28% of astronomy PhD students were female (44% in solar system science!).

You'd hope that the imbalance was down to the senior people having come from a less equal time, and that equality would percolate up, but the picture seems more complicated. The fraction of women to men may actually drop as you go to younger groups. The Institute of Physics shows that only 20% of A-Level physics students are female (age 16-18). The split is pretty similar for those starting university degrees (Graph 5). However, these may be an unfair comparison as physics probably has a poorer gender split than astronomy.

I don't like this imbalance and know that, like everyone, I have a bunch of unconscious (and conscious) biases. Do I help perpetuate the imbalance in things I'm involved with? I helped create a regular astronomy podcast in 2006, and was the chief producer from 2009 to the middle of 2010, so I thought I'd compile some statistics to see. From two listener surveys I knew that the listeners were dominated by men (~85-90%) as are subscribers to Sky And Telescope (95% in 2013). What of the show itself? I've been through the show notes from January 2006 to December 2012 to work it out.

The main part of the show is usually given over to an interview with an astronomer. In total, 362 people were interviewed. Episode-by-episode the gender split varies hugely so I've binned the interviewees by year to look for trends. There is some natural variation from year-to-year but it seems to broadly reflect the imbalance in the professional community with just over 21% being female.

The next thing to look at are the rest of the voices on the show; the presenters. For "presenters" I included those reading the news, describing the night sky, answering astronomy questions, interviewing, and those providing the links between items. I didn't include people who appeared in the intro/outro skits. On average this works out as just over 5 presenters per episode but can be as many as 10 (particularly during conference-based episodes). I'm also counting appearances rather than individuals. As before, the episode-by-episode gender split varies hugely as is depends who is able to help out for a particular show. So, here are the results binned per year:

There are a few things you'll notice. Firstly, the split got worse in 2007. This was when the show split into 2 monthly shows; although the presenters stayed the same, the distribution of appearances changed. In 2009 I made a concerted effort to bring in as many of the new PhD students as I could to distribute the effort amongst a wider pool of people. In the long term this reduced the workload per person and, it seems, made it more balanced with far more people getting to learn new skills and participate. I handed over the reins in mid-2010 and I've been really happy with my successors. In fact I've been very lucky to work with a great bunch of students and postdocs over that time.

Back to Stargazing and I think we do need more female scientists on TV. This shouldn't have to mean fewer male scientists either; let's increase the overall number of scientists. It isn't just the responsibility of TV producers though. The onus is also on early-career scientists to build their confidence with things like science communication courses and by getting involved with outreach. Hopefully the future will have more variety.

Update (19:31): Just after I posted this I noticed I'd had a reply from the examining body for the G.C.S.E astronomy exam. The EdExcel stats (page 5) show that 40% of those taking the course are female and 60% male. The course is entirely optional and I know that some fraction of the people taking it are A-Level students or older.