Small Body Identification Formats

The following official designation formats are contained in the Small Bodies Database and recognized by the search utility:

Asteroids

Asteroid Number

A sequential number assigned when an asteroid's orbit has become sufficiently well-determined. There are currently over 10,000 numbered asteroids.

Name("Ceres", "A'Hearn", "Zappafrank", ...)

An ASCII string of letters which may also include hyphens and single quotes.

IAU Provisional Designation ("1989 SS2", "1998 HK33", "A869 GA", ...)

A four-digit year followed by a space, then two uppercase letters indicating the portion of the year of discovery, followed by an optional sequential number. This designation used an 'A' (for asteroid) in the century digit of the year number prior to 1924.

Asteroid Surveys ("2100 P-L", "1081 T-1", "1335 T-2", ...)

The Palomar-Leiden and Trojan survey identifications consist of a four-digit number followed by "P-L" or "T-1(2,3)", respectively.

Comets

New IAU Designation ("1994 V1", "1995 Q3", etc.)

A year followed by an upper-case letter indicating the half-month of discovery, followed by a number indicating the order of discovery.

Name ("Shoemaker-Levy 9", "Halley", "Encke", ...)

An ASCII string of letters which may also include hyphens and single quotes.

Note: In order to have unique names for short-period (P < 200y) comets, the SBN will continue the previous IAU practice of putting sequential numbers after the name (e.g., "Shoemaker-Levy 9", "Tempel 1"). A list of periodic comet names, with sequential numbers, is maintained here.

Periodic Comet Number ("1", "2", ... )

1-3 digits

Old-Style IAU Provisional Designation ("1982i", "1887a", "1991a1" ...)

A year followed by a single lower-case letter, optionally (and rarely) followed by a single digit.

Old-Style IAU Permanent Designation ("1378","1759 I", "1993 XIII", ...)

A year usually followed by a Roman numeral (in uppercase) indicating the order of perihelion passage of the comet in that year. When there was only one comet passing perihelion in a year, then just the year number is used for this designation.

Note that the year must include all significant digits, i.e., "66" is interpreted as the year 66, not 1966. Years may be negative.