Committee for Small Body Nomenclature

Comité pour la nomenclature des petits corps célestes

Meeting Summary, GA XXVI, 2006

The CSBN meeting took place at GA XXVI of the IAU in Prague on August 23, 2006. About 30 people attended, both members and non-members of the CSBN, including the visitor Ramon Khanna from Springer.

Ex-officio members Iwan Williams and Kaare Aksnes stepped down as they left their respective offices and were replaced by Edward Bowell and Rita Schultz respectively. Regular members Yoshihide Kozai and Richard West stepped down. Syuichi Nakano and Keith Noll were elected as regular members. We thank the departing members for their service to the committee.
NEW MEMBERSHIP FOR 2006-2009
Chair: Jana Tichá, (EU-Czech Rep.)
Div III Rep: Ted Bowell, (USA)
MPC Rep: Brian G. Marsden (secretary), (USA)
CBAT Rep: Daniel Green (for comet names only), (USA)
WGPSN Rep: Rita Schulz, (EU-Netherlands)
Regular Members: Michael F. A'Hearn (USA), Julio Fernández (Uruguay), Pam Kilmartin (New Zealand), Daniela Lazzaro (Brazil), Syuichi Nakano (Japan), Keith Noll (USA), Lutz Schmadel (editor of DMPN, EU-Germany), Viktor Shor (Russia), Gareth Williams (USA), Donald K. Yeomans (USA), Jin Zhu (China)
After a brief discussion it was agreed that this membership is well distributed in terms of geography, gender, and fields of planetary work.

CONCLUSIONS:

• special object naming, particularly the naming of 2003 UB313 and its satellite: the process will consist of the following steps:
  • to ask discoverer M. Brown for reasonable name proposal(s),
  • to discuss the outcome in the CSBN and to transmit the CSBN conclusions to the WGPSN for consideration;
  • the preferred name(s) will be examined by the Division III Organizing Committee, and
  • the choice will be passed to the IAU EC for final approval;
  • this whole process should be as fast as possible because of the intense public interest, with the final name(s) approved within a month if all will go well.
• to publish both names and citations for satellites of minor planets in the Minor Planet Circulars and the DMPN
• to continue to examine ways of limiting the naming process by concentrating on a smaller number of meaningful names/important bodies
• to search for a satisfactory way of establishing a possible free website containing names and citations, bearing in mind in particular the copyright arrangement involving the IAU and Springer

I'm Tired and I Wanna Go Back to:

IAU .............. IAU Division III ............. IAU CSBN

Department of Astronomy ............. M. F. A'Hearn ............. The Real World