Comet Cross-Identification

The majority of the information in this cross-index was compiled from electronic editions of the Catalog of Cometary Orbits, produced by Brian G. Marsden and Gareth V. Williams of the Minor Planet Center (MPC). It is updated regularly as new information becomes available.

The Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams and the MPC, the organizations responsible for assigning new designations, also maintain a cross-reference utility for comet designations.

Enter a comet name or designation (recognized formats are listed below). The name or designation will be matched against a cross-index of comets. All apparitions are listed when a name or periodic comet number is given. Additional apparitions are also returned when the given designation refers to a periodic comet.

Spaces are not significant; case is significant in designations, but not proper names.

In the resulting display, Perihelion Date (on the far right) indicates the time of perihelion passage for that particular apparition. Periodic comets will be listed once for each recorded apparition. The list returned is sorted in order of ascending Perihelion Date.

Designation Formats

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. This may, in turn, be followed by a dash and another capital letter indicating one part of a fragmented comet.

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

An ASCII string of letters which may also include hyphens and single quotes. Note that this is not case-sensitive and will match partial names anywhere within the comet name. So, for example, "iras" matches both "IRAS-Araki-Alcock" and "Hartley-IRAS".

The prefixes "P/" (periodic comet) or "D/" (defunct comet) may be used at the beginning of the search string to indicate that only that type of comet should be returned. When no prefix is included all types of comets will be listed.

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

1-3 digits followed by an upper-case "P", indicating one of the multiple-apparition objects in the file. This is part of the new designation system.

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

A year followed by a single lower-case letter, optionally followed by a single digit.

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

A year usually followed by a Roman numeral (which must be in upper-case) 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.

Problems or Questions?

Please contact Anne Raugh, raugh at astro.umd.edu.

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Last update: 28 June 1996, acr