IAU: WG Small Bodies Nomenclature (WGSBN)

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 Contact

The WGSBN can be contacted at contact@wgsbn-iau.org.

Problems with the website should be reported to secretary@wgsbn-iau.org.

 Rotating Members Interest Form

The form for IAU members to register interest in becoming Rotating Members of the WGSBN in future years is now available.

 Name Proposal Link

Discoverers can use this link to access the name proposal site. Registration is required to access the site. Discoverers who require access should request access.

 Naming Guidelines

Comet Naming Guidelines
Minor Planet Naming Guidelines
      (Translations)

 Discoverer Checking Status

Information on the process of checking the discovery circumstances of the numbered minor planets.

 "Missing" Observation Submissions

Information on observations for which the MPC does not seem to have a copy of the submission.

 Support This Site

Information on how you can support the operation of this website.

 Members

There are 15 members of the WGSBN, 11 of whom are voting members. The other four members, who are ex-officio, are representatives for the IAU WG Planetary System Nomenclature and the Minor Planet Center, as well as the IAU President and General Secretary.

The current members of the WGSBN are listed below:

 Statistics

There are currently 26566 named minor planets.

The WGSBN is a Working Group (WG) of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and is responsible for assigning names to minor planets, comets and satellites of minor planets. It is a functional WG, which means that it exists beyond the regular three-year lifespan of IAU WGs.

 News
 

The six most recent news items are listed below. The complete archive of news items is here.

 September 28: Some Updated Historical Corrigenda Files
 

Five historical corrigenda files have been replaced, either fixing some minor formatting issues with the references or adding missing references. No changes were made to the citation data, the modified names data or the modified discovery circumstances in those corrigenda files.

Thanks to N. Casale (Minor Planet Center) for alerting us to these inconsistencies. Most of the issues were from volumes 1 and 3, and the processing code had already been fixed to prevent these problems occurring in the future. Some further formatting checks are being incorporated into the publication process to prevent the other issues from reoccurring.

 September 28: WGSBN Bulletin 6, #16 Issued
 

 September 7: WGSBN Bulletin 6, #15 Issued
 

 August 21: Unplanned Outage of WGSBN Server
 

 August 17: WGSBN Bulletin 6, #14 Issued
 

 August 3: WGSBN Bulletin 6, #13 Issued
 

 Sign Up For New Bulletin Alerts
 

Enter an e-mail address to receive notifications of the availability of new issues of the WGSBN Bulletin.

E-mail address  

You will receive a message at the offered e-mail address containing a link that you must click in order to activate or cancel your subscription.

 WGSBN Bulletins
 

Current and past issues of the WGSBN Bulletin are available below, as well as on the IAU website (note that the dates displayed on the IAU page are the dates they were posted there, not [necessarily] when they were published). [NOTE: the link to the IAU copy of the issues is currently non-functional due to the IAU site's redesign.]

The latest issue is here and links to older issues are here.

For convenience, links to the issues from the most recent volume are listed below:

 Data Files
 

Links to JSON files associated with each WGSBN Bulletin are available below.

The latest set of files are here (UTF-8 only) or here (UTF-8 + HTML), and links to older files are here.

For convenience, links to the files from the most recent volume are listed below:

 Corrigenda Files
 

Links to JSON files associated with corrigenda for the errata listed in the WGSBN Bulletin are available below.

The latest file is here and links to older files are here.

For convenience, links to the most recent corrigenda files are listed below:

 Documentation
 

Information on the format and information content of the data files on the WG's website is available.

This page also contains links to various WG documents involving nomenclature issues.

 Problem E-Mail Addresses
 

Information on problem e-mails in the list of addresses used for notification of new issues is available.

 Printed WGSBN Bulletin Yearbooks
 

Printed yearbooks of the WGSBN Bulletin are published by WGSBN Publishing, a specialist scientific publisher.