Talk:PSR B1620−26

Designations

Are the designations given here actually used in the literature, all I've been able to find is Wikipedia and Extrasolar Visions mirrors. The papers I've seen refer only to the white dwarf as "the white dwarf companion" and the planet as "the planetary companion". Furthermore, SIMBAD takes PSR 1620-26B as the designation of the planet. Chaos syndrome 17:56, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Nomenclature

The nomenclature of this system is rather problematic. Of the papers I have looked at dealing with this system, none contain any designations for the individual components, instead they are referred to as the white dwarf companion, the third companion, etc.

According to SIMBAD, the designations for this system are:

• Pulsar
  • PSR B1620-26
  • [BPH2004] CX 12
  • PSR J1623-2631
• White dwarf
  • WD J1623-266
• Planet
  • PSR B1620-26B

Note that the planet's designation is apparently uppercase B, which conflicts with the usage of uppercase B for the white dwarf star, and no designation of the form "PSR B1620-26 component" is used.

The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia uses lowercase b for the planet, however this may be an artifact of the PHP system used on that site (e.g. the designations it uses for PSR 1257+12 are incorrect as a result of the system).

Other sites may use A, B and c for the pulsar, white dwarf and planet respectively (e.g. [1]). One popular site [2] even uses a lowercase b for the white dwarf star (in the page title - the header on the page is formatted all-caps).

Most Google search results for the designations turns up mirrors of Extrasolar Visions (a popular rather than an official source) or these Wikipedia articles.

In addition, the lack of other detected circumbinary planets makes it unclear what the convention is in this case.

Not sure how best to resolve this issue. Chaos syndrome 08:50, 22 June 2006 (UTC)