Roger Curry wrote:

> The recent S&T news bulletin talked about Deep Impact and comet Tempel
> 1. I thought it was comet Tempel 9. I don't even find Tempel 1 in the
> comets listed in the Quick Info, though they talk about the comet being
> near Spica and Tempel 9 is not too far from there now. Has this comet
> got two names? The NASA website also calls it Tempel 1.

The name of the comet is "Tempel 1" and the designation is "9P". If you
combine them you get "9P/Tempel 1". Perhaps you'äve seen it referred to
as "9P/Tempel", with the final "1" dropped.

http://cometography.com/pergroup1.html
http://cometography.com/pcomets/009p.html

Periodic comets are named after either the discoverer (e.g. Tempel 1)
or some principial investigator (e.g. Halley and Encke). If several
periodic comets would get the same name, they're distinguished by
a number at the end (e.g. Tempel 1 and Tempel 2 -- others discovered more.
Shoemaker and Levy co-discovered no less than 9 period comets, the
last of them was the famous Shoemaker-Levy 9 which collieded with Jupiter).

If more than one person independently discovered the comet, it can get a
double or triple name, e.g. Tempel-swift-LINEAR

The following periodic comets were named after Tempel:

9P/Tempel 1
10P/Tempel 2
11P/Tempel-Swift-LINEAR
55P/Tempel-Tuttle

> Thanks in advance.
>
> Roger in Jacksonville, FL
>
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