IAU August 2018 general assembly

The IAU August 2018 general assembly has various exoplanet-related stuff going on, it's worth browsing the list of abstracts (talks / posters). Personally, I hope the results of the presentation by Elena Starovoit get confirmed

That would be fascinating to see that confirmed!

Also, apparently the definition of "planet" is being debated/revised, with applicability to exoplanets. There's also some exoplanet nomenclature guidelines. Though, should 55 Cnc should be referred to as ρ1 Cnc?
https://twitter.com/EricMamajek/status/1034398291465842689

Hmmm... not sure about that. Definitely there are some cases when Flamsteed designations are more common than the Bayer ones, often when the Bayer designation includes superscripts, or the Latin letter Bayer designations. So I'd be wary of anything being unnecessarily prescriptive about nomenclature preferences.

On the other hand, maybe some encouragement is needed. E.g. for heaven's sake people, just call it 40 Eridani!!!

I find the L4/L5 stability criteria pretty random, is there any reason to use this?

I think they're trying to argue that the sort of "binary planet-mass brown dwarf" systems, such as 2MASS J11193254-1137466 and 2MASS J02495639-0557352. But why that number, I'm not sure.

I think I should rethink the excel document we were talking about a few years ago and propose them

It would have been so much easier to just make this definition for what defines a planet and we wouldn't be arguing 12 years later the point.

1. Spherical - large enough to form a sphere.
2. Lower limit the size of pluto
3. Until such body can fuse deuterium (2H) or to fuse lithium (7Li) to become a brown dwarf.