Data Set Overview
=================
This data set includes names, designations, and discovery
circumstances for the numbered asteroids, sorted in order of catalog
number.  A similar file sorted in alphabetic order by name is also
available in the Small Bodies Node asteroid data archive.
 
This data set supercedes past versions of both the ASTNAMES and
DISCOVER asteroid data sets.  It represents an extension of a file
originally prepared by Pilcher (1979) for the old Tucson Revised
Index of Asteroid Data (TRIAD) and updated in Pilcher (1989) for the
Asteroids II database.  The data for asteroids numbered 4045 and
higher were either provided by the Minor Planet Center or extracted
from the Minor Planet Circulars, which are published by the Minor
Planet Center on behalf of Commission 20 of the International
Astronomical Union.
 
In some cases, an institution or survey is credited with the
discovery rather than an individual.  No attempt has been made to
correct the inconsistencies in the presentation of names (that is,
some names are given with initials and some are not), or in the way
locations are specified (for example, Pilcher distinguishes between
the Lowell Observatory and Anderson Mesa locations in Flagstaff).
 
Due to the limitations of the ASCII character set, diacritical marks
are lost in this machine-readable form.
 
This version of the data set contains the names, designations, and
discovery circumstances for all asteroids numbered as of the 1996
February 4 batch of Minor Planet Circulars, and includes 6842
entries.
 
References:  Pilcher, F. 1979.  Circumstances of minor planet
discovery.  In
	     Asteroids (T. Gehrels, Ed.), pp. 1130-1154.  Univ. of
	     Arizona Press, Tucson.
 
	     Pilcher, F. 1989.  The circumstances of minor planet
	     discovery.  In Asteroids II (R. P. Binzel, T. Gehrels,
	     and M. S. Matthews, Eds.), pp. 1002-1033.  Univ. of
	     Arizona Press, Tucson.
 
 
Modification History
====================
     The discover data set is a combination of the data originally
     provided in the astnames and discover data sets.  Astname was
first introduced into PDS at the April 1993 asteroid datasets review,
and has been updated yearly since that time.  Discover was first
introduced at the April 1994 asteroid datasets review, and has also
been updated yearly since then.  At the March 1996 review, for the
first time the two data sets have been combined into a single data
set.  Updates of both the astnames and discover components consists
of adding data which have become available since the last update.
  DATA_SET_UPDATE_PERIOD         = 1.0
 
 
Parameters
==========
The data table includes fields for asteroid catalog number, name,
principal provisional designation, discovery date, discovery
location, and the name(s) of the discoverer(s).
 
 
Data
====
This data set is released sorted in order of asteroid catalog number,
in the file nddc1.tab.  An additional file, nddc2.tab, with identical
contents but sorted in alphabetical order by name, is provided by the
Small Bodies Node asteroid data archive for the convenience of
users.

Review
======
This data set underwent external peer review on March 29, 1996.
 
 
Limitations
===========
Only asteroids numbered as of February 4, 1996 are included.