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Minor-planet designation

There are three internationally standardized designations for minor planets , which are assigned by the Minor Planet Center (MPC). In order of assignment, these are: An initial ...

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There are three internationally standardized designations for minor planets, which are assigned by the Minor Planet Center (MPC). In order of assignment, these are:

  1. An initial provisional designation, for all announced discoveries, that reflects the date of discovery;
  2. a permanent designation: a catalog number assigned sequentially once the object has a securely determined orbit; and, for a little under 2% of objects,
  3. a proper name.

For clarity and cross-referencing, it is usual for astronomical sources to identify a numbered object by both its permanent and provisional designations, or by its permanent designation (number) and name, at least in tables and for first mentions in a text. Such concatenations are not in themselves official names.

Comets are also managed by the MPC, as are interstellar interlopers passing through the Solar System, but for them different cataloguing systems are used.

Summary

A provisional designation is automatically assigned when an object is reported to the Minor Planet Center (MPC), a branch of the International Astronomical Union, after at least two-nights observation. A permanent designation (sequential number) is assigned by the MPC once the orbital path is sufficiently secured for the object to be recoverable. A name is optional, and must be unique (the spelling must differ from all other asteroids when stripped of diacritics).

Un objeto suele tener más de una designación provisional. Esto se debe generalmente a que se informaron de forma independiente múltiples observaciones al MPC y se les asignaron designaciones provisionales, para luego ser reconocidas como el mismo objeto. Un ejemplo es 2010 AU 118 , que se perdió con menos de dos días de observación y fue recuperado 15 años después como 2025 ES 3. En tales casos, una de las etiquetas se elegirá como la "designación provisional principal", que luego se utilizará en la mayoría de las circunstancias; las demás son "secundarias". [ 1 ] Con 2010 AU 118 , se eligió la designación más antigua como principal, pero esto no siempre es así. Un ejemplo contrario es (4337) Arecibo , al que se le asignó 1933 HE (informado al MPC en 1933), 1979 FR 3 y 1979 HG 2 (informados al MPC en 1981 sin ser reconocidos como el mismo objeto) y 1985 GB (informado al MPC en 1985), donde se eligió como primaria la designación más reciente .

Más de la mitad de los planetas menores conocidos tienen designaciones/números permanentes. [ 2 ] (Véase Lista de planetas menores sin numerar ). Los descubrimientos independientes de un objeto pueden dar lugar a múltiples designaciones provisionales, pero el requisito de una órbita segura implica que la designación permanente es un identificador único, salvo errores históricos. [ 3 ] En la práctica, una designación permanente suele asignarse después de que la órbita se haya asegurado mediante cuatro oposiciones bien observadas . [ 4 ] Para asteroides cercanos a la Tierra con períodos orbitales cortos, se podría asignar una después de tres o incluso dos oposiciones, [ 4 ] mientras que los objetos distantes pueden requerir más. ( Por ejemplo, a 2014 UZ 224 no se le ha asignado una designación permanente ni siquiera después de siete oposiciones, ya que la incertidumbre de su órbita sigue siendo grande).

Once a permanent designation has been assigned, the object is eligible for naming. The discoverer has the sole right to propose a name (subject to approval by the MPC)[5] for ten years from the date it receives its permanent designation, after which time the option is open to the public (and to the MPC itself).[6] The name must be unique: historically this only applied among minor planets (thus the asteroid 52 Europa and the Jovian moon Europa share a name), but since about 2005 names proposed for asteroids and moons have been rejected due to conflicts between them. Among the nearly a million minor planets that have been numbered,[2] only about twenty six thousand (or 3%) have received a name; this percentage can be expected to decrease as the rate of discoveries accelerates.

Syntax

In indexes and catalogues, compound designations are typically used for numbered objects. Thus the provisional designation alone will be used if the object is unnumbered, the number and provisional designation (or occasionally just the number) for numbered objects that have no name, and the number together with the name, or even all three designations, for named objects.[6] This helps ensure that the object can be cross-referenced.

When the permanent designation/number is used alongside a second designation, the IAU and WGSBN present them thus:

The parentheses around the permanent designation are a historical remnant of the numbered disks used as symbols of early asteroids, such as ④ as the planetary symbol of Vesta (now (4) Vesta).

Other authorities use slightly different formats. The JPL Small-Body Database uses the forms:

  • for unnumbered minor planets: (2006 DP14)
  • for numbered but unnamed minor planets: 388188 (2006 DP14)
  • for named minor planets: 274301 Wikipedia or 274301 Wikipedia (2008 QH24)[7]

Here parentheses are not used to delimit the permanent designation, but are used to set off the provisional designation. JPL does not subscript the index number, at least not online, but professionally printed sources that cite JPL often do, for e.g.

  • 388188 (2006 DP14).

JPL occasionally uses more than one provisional designation, typically for recovered objects where both are notable. For example:

  • 517103 (2013 EM20 = 2008 AO112).

The Minor Planet Center does not use any particular format. It may refer to a numberless object by its provisional designation: 2006 DP14, a numbered object by its permanent designation: (388188), and a named and numbered objection by both: (274301) Wikipedia. When equating these various designations, as when publishing new permanent designations that it has assigned, it may identify them as either

  • (388188) = 2006 DP14 or
  • 2006 DP14 = (388188),

depending on which designation is being identified with which. The same may be done with named asteroids, and where more than one provisional designation has been assigned to an object (due to multiple discoveries, or to its having been lost and later identified with another designated object), these may be appended with additional equal signs. Online, the MPC doesn't bother to subscript the indices, resulting in identifications such as:

  • (274301) Wikipedia = 2007 FK34 = 1997 RO4 = 2008 QH24[8]

When the main-belt asteroid Wikipedia was discovered (or actually rediscovered) in August 2008, for example, it was provisionally designated 2008 QH24, and it later received the permanent designation (274301). On 27 January 2013, it was named Wikipedia, and the announcement was published in the Minor Planet Circulars with the identification:

  • (274301) Wikipedia = 2008 QH24.[9]

Satellites

Satellites of minor planets are not automatically assigned a provisional designation when they are announced. There are thus many satellites that have no formal designation at all.

Once the orbit is secured, they are given a provisional designation of the form "S" (for "satellite") + the year of discovery + the permanent or provisional designation of the primary, followed by a discovery number. (In case more than one satellite of that body is discovered in the same year. The final number will therefore usually be "1".) For example, the first known satellite of (87) Sylvia, discovered in 2001, was assigned the provisional designation S/2001 (87) 1; its second moon was discovered in 2004 and designated S/2004 (87) 1.

The Roman numeral convention that has been used, on and off, for moons of the planets since Galileo's time, may be applied as a permanent designation. Not all satellites, or even named satellites, are assigned a permanent designation, but the two Sylvian moons were designated I and II, respectively. Combining this designation with that of the primary typically takes the form (87) Sylvia I and (87) Sylvia II.

A diferencia de los planetas menores primarios, la denominación no requiere que un satélite tenga una designación permanente; de ​​hecho, las designaciones permanentes con números romanos a menudo se asignan después de que las lunas son nombradas. La primera luna de Sylvia fue llamada Romulus y la segunda Remus . Un formato común para combinar las designaciones permanentes y los nombres es (87) Sylvia I Romulusy (87) Sylvia II Remus. El formato compuesto es necesario para una identificación segura (si se desea usar el nombre en absoluto) porque el nombre por sí solo puede ser ambiguo: Romulus, por ejemplo, comparte su nombre con el asteroide 10386 Romulus ( 1996 TS 15 ).

Historia

Los planetas menores se identificaron inicialmente con un nombre clásico femenino y se abreviaron con un símbolo gráfico asociado, como se hacía (y aún se hace) con los planetas mayores. En 1851 se conocían quince asteroides, cada uno con su propio símbolo (aunque algunos símbolos se publicaron solo como una descripción verbal): . Los símbolos se volvieron cada vez más complejos a medida que aumentaba el número de objetos, y a los editores les resultaba cada vez más difícil componerlos tipográficamente. Esta dificultad fue abordada por Benjamin Apthorp Gould en 1851, quien sugirió numerar los asteroides en orden de descubrimiento (inicialmente comenzando con el quinto asteroide, Astraea , pero en un año reiniciando a (1) Ceres ), y colocar este número en un círculo (un disco planetario) como símbolo del asteroide ; por ejemplo , ④ como símbolo del cuarto asteroide, Vesta . Este símbolo numérico se fue asociando cada vez más con el nombre, por ejemplo ④ Vesta , para mayor claridad a medida que aumentaba el número de planetas menores. A finales de la década de 1850, el círculo se había simplificado a paréntesis, (4) y (4) Vesta , lo que era más fácil de componer tipográficamente.⚳⚴⚵🝷🝸𜻀𜻁𜻂𜻃🝹𜻄𜻅𜻆𜻇𜻈

Otros nueve símbolos gráficos fueron ideados hasta 1855, momento en el que la tradición cesó por completo. Ninguno de los símbolos gráficos posteriores a los cuatro primeros tuvo un uso notable después del siglo XIX, y poco dentro del mismo. Pronto se desarrolló una puntuación más reducida, como 4 ) Vesta , 4, Vesta y 4 Vesta , pero los formatos 4) y 4, habían desaparecido casi por completo en 1949, quedando solo los actuales (4) y 4. [ 10 ]

The precursor to the modern system of provisional designations first appeared in the journal Astronomische Nachrichten in 1892, and the current format has been in place since 1925.[11][12] There were some later exceptions, such as the Palomar–Leiden survey designations that were assigned between 1960 and 1977, but today all minor planets with elliptical orbits are assigned provisional designations following the MPC convention.

A notable outlier to the pattern that the permanent designation reflects the order of discovery (or these days securing the orbit) is the case of (134340) Pluto. Since Pluto was initially classified as a planet, it was not given a minor-planet number until after a 2006 redefinition of "planet" that excluded it. A proposal a few years earlier to reserve the number (100000) for Pluto, paralleling other round numbers that had been assigned out of sequence for the notable objects (20000) Varuna and (50000) Quaoar, was not acted on in the debate over whether a number should be assigned at all. Pluto's minor-planet number is largely a formality, and is rarely used in practice.

See also

References

  1. ↑This can be verified by checking the MPC Explorer website.
  2. 12"How Many Solar System Bodies". Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Retrieved 18 November 2019.
  3. ↑Exceptions date to before numbering required secure orbits. Perhaps the only example is 1928 UF, which was assigned the number 1125 and named "China". It was not observed long enough for a precise orbit to be calculated, and so was lost. Later another asteroid, 1957 UN1, was given 1928 UF's number and name. When 1928 UF was recovered in 1986, it was given the new permanent designation and name (3789) Zhongguo. Therefore "(1125)" and even "(1125) China" are not unique identifiers. Many other early numbered asteroids were lost, but their numbers were never reassigned. The last of these, the small near-Earth asteroid (719) Albert, was recovered in 2000.
  4. 12"How Are Minor Planets Named?". Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 2014-02-25.
  5. ↑Specifically by the Committee on Small Bodies Nomenclature at the MPC, assuming that the absolute magnitude is greater than (dimmer than) +1. For brighter objects, a joint committee of the CSBN and the planetary working group of the IAU reviews the names. This has only happened for Haumea and Makemake.
  6. 12"How Minor Planet Are Named". IAU – International Astronomical Union. 2005. Archived from the original on 16 February 2006. Retrieved 5 January 2017.
  7. ↑Horizons System: Horizons Web Application
  8. ↑"274301 Wikipedia (2008 QH24)". Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 5 January 2017.
  9. ↑"MPC/MPO/MPS Archive". Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 5 January 2017.
  10. ↑From Dr. James Hilton'sWhen Did the Asteroids Become Minor Planets?Archived 2009-08-25 at the Wayback Machine, particularly the discussion of Gould, B. A. 1852, On the Symbolic Notation of the Asteroids, Astronomical Journal, Vol. 2, and immediately subsequent history. The discussion of C. J. Cunningham (1988), also from there, explains the parenthetical part.
  11. ↑Schmadel, Lutz D. (2012). Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, 6th edition. p. 3. ISBN 978-3662517352.
  12. ↑Krueger, A. (1892). "Notiz betr. die Nummerirung der kleinen Planeten". Astronomische Nachrichten (in German). 130 (3106): 159.
  • Minor Planet Names: Alphabetical List
  • IAU FAQ on minor planets
  • MPC explanation of provisional designations
  • Dr. James Hilton, When Did the Asteroids Become Minor Planets?