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IAU Division III
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Committee on Small Body Nomenclature
Comité pour la nomenclature des petits corps
célestes
A Committee of IAU Division III
The Committee for Small Body Nomenclature (Small Bodies Names Committee prior
to February 2000) has responsibility, under the
authority of the IAU, for the names of the small bodies (except
satellites of the major planets) in the solar system.
The actual naming is administered, under the guidance of the
committee, by the Minor Planet Center (MPC) and the Central Bureau
for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT). The
committee also has the responsibility for the designations of these
bodies. The committee originated as an ad hoc advisory committee
appointed by the director of the Minor Planet Center. It subsequently
became formalized, reporting first to Commission 20 and then to Division III,
after creation of the divisions, in 1997.
The detailed Terms of Reference as
approved by the IAU Executive Committee in 2000 are available.
The Committee
The members of the committee for the 2006-2009 triennium are
Chair: Jana Tichá (EU - Czech Republic)
Div III Rep: Edward L. G. Bowell (USA)
MPC Rep: Brian G. Marsden (USA), secretary
CBAT Rep: Daniel Green (USA), participates for comet names only
WGPSN Rep: Rita Schulz (EU - Netherlands)
Regular Members: Michael F. A'Hearn (USA), Julio Fernández
(Uruguay), Pam Kilmartin (New Zealand),
Daniela Lazzaro (Brazil),
Syuichi Nakano (Japan), Keith Noll (USA),
Lutz Schmadel (EU - Germany, editor of DMP), Viktor Shor (Russia),
Gareth Williams (USA),
Donald K. Yeomans (USA), Jin Zhu (China)
General communications to the committee should normally be addressed
to the
chair and secretary.
Naming Small Bodies
The committee welcomes questions or suggestions about its procedures
or suggestions of specific names for certain objects. However,
neither the CSBN nor the IAU nor either the CBAT or MPC sells names
of comets or asteroids to the public. This derives from the general
policy of the IAU on selling names for celestial bodies which you can
read at
the IAU web
site. The CBAT and the MPC do sometimes name comets or asteroids
for people, but only under certain, well-defined guidelines, as linked
below.
More information:
Interactive web pages are available to look up most of the alternative
designations and names of an object at the
CBAT
for comets and at the
MPC
for minor planets. Another cross-reference, combining comets and minor
planets together, but not having a
complete listing of all the preliminary designations of minor planets,
is available at the Small Bodies Node
(SBN) of the
Planetary Data System.
Committee Records
Previous membership lists (back to 1991) are available
here.
A brief summary of the meeting at GA XXVI in Prague is available
here.
The reports for the Transactions of the IAU for the last few triennia
are available here:
Vol XXVI A (2006),
Vol XXV A (2003),
Vol XXIV A (2000).
I'm Tired and I Wanna Go Back to:
IAU
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IAU Division III
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IAU CSBN
Department of Astronomy
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M. F. A'Hearn
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The Real World
Created: 1997/9/9, mfa;
Last Updated:
Thursday, 03-Sep-2009 10:52:32 EDT