Astronomy Editing and Proofreading Services

Written out for a reader, one minor planet is 2007 TA418. Stored in the Minor Planet Center's orbit and observation files, the same object is K07Tf8A.¹ Both strings are correct, and each has a place the other does not fit. Which belongs where is settled by published rules rather than a house style sheet.

Each part of a provisional designation is fixed separately

The Minor Planet Center describes a provisional designation as parts "all of which are related to the date of discovery of the object."² They are "a 4-digit number indicating the year; a space; a letter to show the half-month; another letter to show the order within the half-month; and an optional number."² That last number indicates "the number of times the second letter has been repeated in that half-month period."² The half-month letter runs from A for January 1 to 15 through Y for December 16 to 31, and there "I is omitted and Z is unused."²

The separate table for the order within a half-month runs A for the first through Z for the twenty-fifth, and prints "I is omitted" beneath it.² Past twenty-five, "the second letter is recycled and a numeral 1 is added to the end of the designation," with a 2 after fifty.² None of those characters is settled by the person writing the paper.

The same object has a second written form, meant for software

In those files the designation is held "in a 7-character packed format that saves space and makes sorting easier."¹ The first two digits of the year become a single character in the first column, where "I = 18, J = 19, K = 20."¹ The center's worked examples pack 1995 XA as J95X00A and 2007 TA418 as K07Tf8A.¹

Permanent numbers use a different scheme again. A number below 100,000 is stored as a zero-padded right-justified string, and larger numbers put the remainder in four columns and turn the quotient into a letter.¹ Above 619,999 the form becomes a tilde and a base-62 encoding.¹ One object can therefore appear correctly in three strings, depending on the record it sits in.

A second naming system, for objects outside the solar system

The astronomical data center at Strasbourg, known as CDS, keeps a dictionary of nomenclature for objects outside the solar system. That dictionary opens plainly: "Designations of astronomical objects are often confusing."³ The dictionary "provides full references and usages about 25691 different acronyms," and encourages anyone preparing a new catalog to register one "preferably before your new objects become referenced (even informally)."³

The International Astronomical Union states the standing of its own naming decisions plainly. It "has been the arbiter of planetary and satellite nomenclature since its inception in 1919."⁴ Its decisions and recommendations "are not enforceable by any national or international law; rather they establish conventions."⁴ Those conventions are "meant to help our understanding of astronomical objects and processes."⁴

Two lengths at which a table changes form

Authors are "strongly encouraged" to deliver tables longer than about 200 data rows in machine readable format at submission.⁵ Above 400 data lines the full data set appears only in that format, with a short example version printed in the manuscript.⁵ Such a file carries a byte-by-byte description whose five columns are Bytes, Format, Units, Label, and Explanations.⁶

A description in that fifth column "can also be preceded by other characters which have special meaning."⁶ A question mark indicates "that NULL values are allowed in a numeric (but not a string) column," and square brackets enclose "the only allowed values that may appear in the data column."⁶ The unit strings have rules of their own. Any unit "is described by a single word" with no space allowed, and the only permitted numerical factor sits "at the very beginning of the Unit string."⁷ A power is written with nothing between the symbol and the exponent, as in m2.⁷

What an editor can settle here, and what stays with the authors

Which object a paper concerns, and whether a measurement holds, are questions for the authors and the referee. An editor's contribution is narrower. It covers whether the string in the abstract is the string in the table and the caption, and whether a unit in a column description matches the one used in the text. Client material is treated as confidential without exception.

Formatting habits that help a printed page can work against a machine readable file. Inserting a space around an operator, superscripting an exponent, and regularizing capitalization in a column label are ordinary copy editing moves. The unit rules exclude the first two.⁷ The third changes the Label field, and the society notes that "some of the most common astronomical values have predefined labels" which "are recognized by our software."⁶

One step in the naming of a minor planet is written rather than derived. When there are observations at four or more oppositions, the object "may receive a permanent designation, a number."⁸ For objects that became multi-opposition after MPEC 2010-U20, the discoverer is "the observer who made the earliest-reported observation at the opposition with the earliest-reported second-night observation."⁸ Objects with multiple-opposition orbits before that circular take the discoverer of the principal designation instead.⁸

Whichever rule applies, the discoverer holds the naming privilege "for a period of ten years following the numbering of the object," and "writes a short citation explaining the reasons for assigning the name."⁸ Names and citations are judged by the Working Group Small Body Nomenclature, and a name becomes official on publication in that group's bulletin.⁸ The designations earlier in this article are produced by applying rules to a date or a number.