The previous Transits of Venus Working Group report #6, covering the time mid-2006 to mid-2009, was published by the undersigned in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, Vol. 12, p. 254 (2009). The present report #7, covering the time up to mid-2011, has been prepared for the Reports presented at the IAU General Assembly in Beijing, August 2012. It is expected that after a flurry of publications before and after the transit of 2012, the activities in the field will drop dramatically, and it is planned to terminate the activities of the working group after the Beijing General Assembly, and to write a closing report for the subsequent General Assembly.

The WG was created in 2008 to progress UNESCO's Astronomy and World Heritage Initiative (AWHI) jointly with the World Heritage Centre, following the signing of a formal Memorandum of Understanding between the IAU and UNESCO.

The activities of the Commission have continued to focus on controlling unwanted light and radio emissions at observatory sites, monitoring of conditions at observatory sites, and education and outreach. Commission members have been active in securing new legislation in several locations to further the protection of observatory sites as well as in the international regulation of the use of the radio spectrum and the protection of radio astronomical observations.

Commission 55 was approved at the IAU General Assembly in Prague following the great success of the Communicating Astronomy Working Group, which had been set up in 2003. It resides within Division XII and the mission statement of the Working Group has been incorporated into the Commission:

• • To encourage and enable a much larger fraction of the astronomical community to take an active role in explaining what we do (and why) to our fellow citizens.

• • To act as an international, impartial coordinating entity that furthers the recognition of outreach and public communication on all levels in astronomy.

• • To encourage international collaborations on outreach and public communication.

• • To endorse standards, best practices and requirements for public communication.

Some 10 years ago the IAU Executive Committee created a Working Group on Future Large Scale Facilities, but its activities have fallen somewhat into abeyance in the last few years. It has been decided to revive the group, and Roger Davies (Oxford) has agreed to chair it.

The Working Group was created at the 25th IAU General Assembly in Sydney, Australia, in July 2003 by the IAU Executive Council as a Working Group of IAU Executive. The aims of the Working Group are to evaluate the status of women in astronomy through the collection of statistics over all countries where astronomy research is carried out; and to establish strategies and actions that can help women to attain true equality as research astronomers, which will add enormous value to all of astronomy.