Public Naming of Planets and Planetary Satellites

TL;DR

The paper discusses the IAU's tradition of public participation in naming celestial bodies, highlighting the new 'NameExoWorlds' contest to engage public interest in exoplanet naming while maintaining scientific and organizational authority.

Contribution

It introduces the 'NameExoWorlds' project as a formalized public engagement initiative for exoplanet naming, balancing public interest with scientific standards.

Findings

Established clear rules for public exoplanet naming campaigns

Secured IAU's authority in officially approving names

Boosted public interest in astronomy through the contest

Abstract

While one of the IAU's missions is to "serve as the internationally recognized authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies and surface features on them", the participation of the public in the naming of celestial objects has been a little-known, but decade-long tradition of the IAU. While reiterating its opposition to having the public pay to give a name to an exoplanet, the IAU Executive Committee nonetheless recognized the right of organizations to invite public, international exoplanet naming or voting campaigns. To this end, clear selection rules were to be defined by the IAU, inviting mutual collaboration, the goal being to sanction the campaign and officially approve the resulting names, for the sake of boosting the public's interest in astronomy and at the same time reaffirm the authority of the IAU. In no way were these names supposed to supersede the designations in use by professional astronomers. Since the field of exoplanet research was still "virgin" for naming but is now becoming scientifically mature (with hundreds of well-characterized, confirmed objects) and so appealing to the public's interest and imagination, IAU decided to organize a naming contest as the leader of a new project with a potentially high worldwide impact, the first since the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, called "NameExoWorlds".