SAO
MPC
ICQ
The CBAT is responsible for the dissemination of information on transient astronomical events and various IAU news including the announcement of designations and names of various celestial objects -- via the IAU Circulars (IAUCs) , a series of postcard-sized announcements issued at irregular intervals as necessary in both printed and electronic form, and (as of 2002 Dec. 20) often now also via the electronic-only Central Bureau Electronic Telegrams (CBETs). The CBAT is the official worldwide clearinghouse for new discoveries of comets, solar-system satellites, novae, supernovae, and other transient astronomical events. The first Central Bureau was formally created in the 1880s in Kiel, Germany, remaining there until World War I when it was moved to Copenhagen Observatory (Denmark), where it remained until the end of 1964; the IAU (formed in 1919) adopted the Copenhagen Observatory's Central Bureau as its official Bureau Central des Télégrammes Astronomiques in 1922. On 1965 Jan. 1, the CBAT moved from Copenhagen to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the Harvard College Observatory had been acting as the western hemisphere's astronomy information center also since 1883 (an arrangement several years earlier between the Royal Astronomer in England and the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in the U.S.A. allowed for several astronomical telegrams per year to be sent back and forth via the new cable laid under the Atlantic Ocean, and this began the astronomical-discovery announcement service for the western hemisphere that was soon transferred from Washington, DC, to Harvard). The CBAT has operated in Cambridge since 1965 under the successive directorships of Prof. Owen Gingerich (1965-1968), Dr. Brian G. Marsden (1968-2000), and Dr. Daniel W. E. Green (2000-present).