The gender† dimension of science and technology has become one of the most important and debated issues worldwide, impacting society at every level. A variety of international initiatives on the subject have been undertaken, including the continued monitoring of the status of women in science by Unesco Institute for Statistics (UIS) or the annual reports “Education at a Glance” by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as well as field-related working groups and networking in order to collect data in a consistent manner. The majority of the international organizations have made clear statements about their discrimination policies (independently of their main field(s) of action), including the International Council for Science whose regulations are followed by the IAU. Gender equality at large is one of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which clearly calls for action related to science, technology and gender.

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.

The Executive Committee Working Group on “Cosmic Light” was created in 2014 (at its EC94 Meeting, Apr.30-May 2, Canberra, Australia), in preparation of the contribution of the IAU to the UNESCO “2015 International Year of Light and Light Technologies” (IYL2015), which had been approved by the UN in December 2013 (see http://www.light2015.org/Home.html).