TheCentral Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT) is an official internationalclearing house for information relating totransient astronomical events.
The CBAT collects and distributes information oncomets,natural satellites,novae, meteors, and other transient astronomical events. The CBAT has historically established priority of discovery (who gets credit for it) and announcedinitial designations and names of new objects.
On behalf of theInternational Astronomical Union (IAU) from 1920 to 2015, the CBAT distributedIAU Circulars. From the 1920s to 1992, CBAT sent telegrams in urgent cases, although most circulars were sent via regularmail; when telegrams were dropped, the name "telegram" was kept for historical reasons, and theCentral Bureau Electronic Telegrams (CBETs) were begun a decade later as a digital-only expanded version of the IAUCs, still issued by e-mail to subscribers and posted at the CBAT website.[1] Since the mid-1980s theIAU Circulars and the relatedMinor Planet Circulars have been available electronically.
The CBAT is anon-profit organization, but charges for itsIAU Circulars and electronic telegrams to finance its continued operation.
The Central Bureau was founded byAstronomische Gesellschaft in 1882 atKiel, Germany. DuringWorld War I it was moved to theØstervold Observatory atCopenhagen,Denmark, to be operated there by theCopenhagen University Observatory.
In 1922, the IAU made the Central Bureau its officialBureau Central des Télégrammes Astronomiques (French for Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams), and it remained in Copenhagen until 1965, when it moved to theHarvard College Observatory, to be operated there by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory on the Harvard University campus. In 2010, the CBAT moved from SAO to the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University.
It has remained inCambridge, Massachusetts to this day. The HCO had maintained a western-hemisphere Central Bureau from 1883 until the IAU's CBAT moved there at the end of 1964, so logically the HCO staff took over the IAU's Bureau.[2]
