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This program takes Minor Planet Center comet and minor
planet designations and converts both ways between packed and unpacked
formats. The converted designation is copied to the clipboard for ease
of use.
Most current types of designations are handled,
including:
- Minor Planet permanent numbers from 1 - 619999
- Minor Planet permanent numbers from 620000 -
15396335 (i.e. covering the base 62 packed form announced in
MPEC 2019-O55)
- Minor Planet new-style provisional designations (e.g. 2021
CG9)
- Minor Planet designations from the Palomar-Leiden
and first, second and Third Trojan Surveys (see
Survey Designations)
- Comet permanent numbers
- Comet provisional designations in cometary style
(e.g. C/2021 A10)
- Comet provisional designations in minor planet
style (e.g. P/2019 GG21)
- Split comets in permanent and provisional styles
- A/ objects and Interstellar objects
- Extended Packed Provisional Designations for asteroids and
comets (e.g. 2024 TB63927, C/2028 EA339749). See
MPC documentation.
Note: New-style unpacked provisional designations
extended to pre-1925 are handled (e.g. A801 AA = provisional
designation for Ceres) but old-style provisional designations are NOT, see
Old-Style Provisional Designations).
See also general MPC documentation describing
New-Style Provisional Designations and the
packed forms for provisional and permanent designations.Where there is no
apparent ambiguity, letters that are entered
with the wrong case (upper or lower) are corrected as a convenience to the user, e.g. if comet designation
c/2019
y4-d is entered, the program will change the incorrect lower case letters to
upper case and display:
- C/2019 Y4-D for the unpacked designation of a
split comet and
- CK19Y04d for the packed version of the
same object
There are occasions when this is not possible, e.g.
Packed cometary provisional designation PK16J01b relates to fragment B
of split comet P/2016 J1. But PK16J01B is a minor planet style
designation which would convert to comet P/2016 JB1, completely
unrelated to comet P/2016 J1 (and does not in fact exist). Note that the
program attempts to convert the designations depending on the format
entered, it does not check whether those designations have actually
been issued by the Minor Planet Center.
Here are some examples
of conversions:
Provisional periodic comet fragment designation:
Permanently numbered periodic comet fragment:
Permanently numbered minor planet:
Permanently numbered minor planet (in base 62 packed format):
Provisional minor planet designation:
Provisional minor planet designation from
Palomar-Leiden Survey:
Extended provisional minor planet designation:
Extended provisional periodic comet designation:
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