If a comet is discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey, how is it designated?
Answer
The survey itself
The evolution of comet discovery methods, particularly the rise of professional, automated surveys, necessitated a change in naming protocol. When a sophisticated program, such as the Catalina Sky Survey, utilizes its systems to detect a new object, the credit shifts from an individual observer to the entity responsible for the technology that made the find. Therefore, if an algorithm running on a survey platform finds the object, the designation is attributed to the survey program itself, reflecting that the finding entity is the computer system, not a single person visually scanning.
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