Minor Planet Designations

The following form allow one to find the principal or permanent designation or name for a minor planet and/or a list of identifications given a known permanent, provisional or temporary designation. It also allows an old-style provisional designation to be converted in to a new-style provisional designation. Examples of valid search strings are given below.

Minor-Planet Designation Conversion

Format Of Output

If a search returns `No information available on this designation', it means either that the designation does not exist or that the particular designation you entered is not identified with any other object.

If a search is successful the following information is returned:

If the input designation was an old-style designation, the corresponding new-style designation is shown.
If the new-style designation has been omitted or deleted, or has been identified with a comet or natural satellite, this is simply stated.
If the new-style designation has been identified with a numbered minor planet the number, name and principal provisional designation are shown, followed by a list of identifications with other provisional designations.
If the new-style designation has been identified with some other provisionally-designated object, the identifications are listed, with the principal designation first.

Note that a search for an old-style provisional designation may return multiple matches.

Examples Of Valid Designations

There are several formats for valid input.

Permanent Designation

Enter either a minor-planet number, name or combination of number and name in one of the following forms:

(433)
Eros
(433) Eros

Note that numbers should be enclosed within parentheses and that names are case sensitive. Any diacritical marks in the name should be ignored: to find the provisional designations that belong to (1511) Daléra one would simply enter the name as Dalera.

Provisional Designations

Enter a new-style (post-1925) provisional designation in one of the following forms:

1993 AF
A900 UA
1995 EJ6
1981 EG38
6299 P-L
4152 T-1
1170 T-2
5193 T-3

Old-Style Provisional Designations

There are numerous different formats for pre-1925 designations. Some documentation on the various forms is available.

Temporary Designations

A number of observer-assigned temporary designations are also available for checking. In general, these designations were assigned prior to 1945. Some documentation on the various designations included here is available. These deprecated designations are included as an aid to the historical researcher and should not be used in a current context.

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