Hello,
Does anyone know how to cite stellar objects in a scientific paper?
I am trying to figure out how to cite/reference a main-belt asteroid in the JPL small-body database (http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi). Information on this and ways to cite other bodies in general (stars, etc.) would be appreciated!

P.S. This is my first post on this forum, please excuse me if this is not the appropriate place to post this.

What do you mean by "cite?" As in your reference list of where you got the information, or as in how you refer to the object in a paper. For the former, it varies by journal and is a pain in the butt reformatting everything for each submission. If the catalog has a published paper to go with it, then you cite the paper which is always nice. If the catalog is just a catalog, or a data set that you may find online, then I usually will just reference it in the Acknowledgments that the data are freely available from such-and-such website.

For the latter, minor planets (asteroids, Kuiper Belt Objects) are referred to with their number and then name. For example, 1 Ceres, though some people reference it as (1) Ceres. Or (136199) Eris.

Stars, galaxies, and other objects are just given a catalog name/number. For example, HD 246357 (a star from the Henry Draper catalog). For very common objects, some journals will specify what to use, but pretty much everyone knows what the Andromeda Galaxy is, and you can always say the first time you use it, "the Andromeda Galaxy (M31)" and then just use M31 throughout for brevity.

And welcome to the boards.

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penyuan. Nice post by Stu. If you contact the journal website, they usually have authors notes with all the particulars they specifically require. If you are friendly with somebody who does technical typing, or has previous experience dealing with the specific journal you intend to work with, contact them. Sometimes in the front of the journal you read and intend to write to they have e-mail addresses to ask questions pertaining to publishing specifics. Be patient. pete

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