Provisional Designation in Astronomy - Comets

Comets

The system used previous to 1995 was complex. The year was followed by a space and then a Roman numeral (indicating the sequence of discovery) in most cases, but difficulties always arose when an object needed to be placed between previous discoveries. For example, after Comet 1881 III and Comet 1881 IV might be reported, an object discovered in between the discovery dates but reported much later couldn't be designated "Comet 1881 III 1/2". More commonly comets were known by the discoverer's name and the year. An alternate scheme also listed comets in order of time of perihelion passage, using lower-case letters; thus "Comet Faye" (modern designation 4P/Faye) was both Comet 1881 I (first comet discovered in 1881) and Comet 1880c (third comet to pass at its perihelion in 1880 —note how the comet was discovered on its way out of our vicinity).

The system since 1995 is similar to the provisional designation of minor planets. For comets, the provisional designation consists of the year of discovery, a space, ONE letter (unlike the minor planets with two) indicating the half-month of discovery within that year (A=first half of January, B=second half of January, etc. skipping I and not reaching Z), and finally a number (not subscripted as with minor planets), indicating the sequence of discovery. Thus, the eighth comet discovered in the second half of March 2006 would be given the provisional designation 2006 F8, whilst the tenth comet of late March would be 2006 F10.

If a comet splits, its segments are given the same provisional designation with a suffixed letter A, B, C, ..., Z, a, b, c..., z. One presumes that tracking beyond 52 fragments is unlikely.

If an object is originally found asteroidal, and later develops a cometary tail, it retains its asteroidal designation. For example, minor planet 1954 PC turned out to be Comet Faye, and we thus have "4P/1954 PC" as one of the designations of said comet. Similarly, minor planet 1999 RE₇₀ was reclassified as a comet, and because it was discovered by LINEAR, it is now known as 176P/LINEAR (LINEAR 52) and (118401) LINEAR.

Comets are assigned one of four possible prefixes as a rough classification. The prefix "P" (as in, for example, P/1997 C1, a.k.a. Comet Gehrels 4) designates a periodic comet, one which has an orbital period of less than 200 years or which has been observed during more than a single perihelion passage (e.g. 153P/Ikeya-Zhang, whose period is 367 years). They receive a permanent number prefix after their second observed perihelion passage (as of January 2007, there are 183 such comets).

Comets which do not fulfill the "periodic" requirements receive the "C" prefix (e.g. C/2006 P1, the Great Comet of 2007), but it should be noted that such comets may switch to "P" if they later fulfill the requirements. Comets which have been lost or have disintegrated are prefixed "D" (e.g. D/1993 F2, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9). Finally, comets known from historical records but for which no reliable orbit could be calculated are prefixed "X" (e.g. X/1106 C1).

Provisional designations for comets are given condensed or "packed form" in the same manner as minor planets. 2006 F8, if a periodic comet, would be listed in the IAU Minor Planet Database as PK06F080. The last character is purposely a zero, as that allows comet and minor planet designations not to overlap.