Minor Planet Center in the context of "List of minor planet discoverers"

This is a list of parabolic and hyperbolic comets in the Solar System. Many of these comets may come from the Oort cloud, or perhaps even have interstellar origin. The Oort Cloud is not gravitationally attracted enough to the Sun to form into a fairly thin disk, like the inner Solar System. Thus, comets originating from the Oort Cloud can come from roughly any orientation (inclination to the ecliptic), and many even have a retrograde orbit. By definition, a hyperbolic orbit means that the comet will only travel through the Solar System once, with the Sun acting as a gravitational slingshot, sending the comet hurtling out of the Solar System entirely unless its eccentricity is otherwise changed. Comets orbiting in this way still originate from the Solar System, however. Typically comets in the Oort Cloud are thought to have roughly circular orbits around the Sun, but their orbital velocity is so slow that they may easily be perturbed by passing stars and the galactic tide. Astronomers have been discovering weakly hyperbolic comets that were perturbed out of the Oort Cloud since the mid-1800s.

Prior to finding a well-determined orbit for comets, the JPL Small-Body Database and the Minor Planet Center list comet orbits as having an assumed eccentricity of 1.0. (This is the eccentricity of a parabolic trajectory; hyperbolics will be those with eccentricity greater than 1.0.) In the list below, a number of comets discovered by the SOHO space telescope have assumed eccentricities of exactly 1.0, because most orbits are based on only an insufficient observation arc of several hours or minutes. The SOHO satellite observes the corona of the Sun and the area around it, and as a result often observes sungrazing comets, including the Kreutz sungrazers.

The following is a partial list of minor planets, running from minor-planet number 14001 through 15000, inclusive. The primary data for this and other partial lists is based on JPL's "Small-Body Orbital Elements" and data available from the Minor Planet Center. Critical list information is also provided by the MPC, unless otherwise specified from Lowell Observatory. A detailed description of the table's columns and additional sources are given on the main page including a complete list of every page in this series, and a statistical break-up on the dynamical classification of minor planets.

Also see the summary list of all named bodies in numerical and alphabetical order, and the corresponding naming citations for the number range of this particular list. New namings may only be added to this list after official publication, as the preannouncement of names is condemned by the Working Group for Small Bodies Nomenclature of the International Astronomical Union.

A formal minor-planet designation is, in its final form, a number–name combination given to a minor planet (asteroid, centaur, trans-Neptunian object and dwarf planet but not comet). Such designation always features a leading number (catalog or IAU number) assigned to a body once its orbital path is sufficiently secured (so-called "numbering"). The formal designation is based on the minor planet's provisional designation, which was previously assigned automatically when it had been observed for the first time. Later on, the provisional part of the formal designation may be replaced with a name (so-called "naming"). Both formal and provisional designations are overseen by the Minor Planet Center (MPC), a branch of the International Astronomical Union.

Currently, a number is assigned only after the orbit has been secured by four well-observed oppositions. For unusual objects, such as near-Earth asteroids, numbering might already occur after three, maybe even only two, oppositions. Among more than half a million minor planets that received a number, only about 20 thousand (or 4%) have received a name. In addition, approximately 700,000 minor planets have not been numbered, as of November 2023.

The Mars trojans are a group of trojan objects that share the orbit of the planet Mars around the Sun. They can be found around the two Lagrangian points 60° ahead of and behind Mars. The origin of the Mars trojans is not well understood. One hypothesis suggests that they were primordial objects left over from the formation of Mars that were captured in its Lagrangian points as the Solar System was forming. However, spectral studies of the Mars trojans indicate this may not be the case. Another explanation involves asteroids chaotically wandering into the Mars Lagrangian points later in the Solar System's formation. This is also questionable considering the short dynamical lifetimes of these objects. The spectra of Eureka and two other Mars trojans indicates an olivine-rich composition. Since olivine-rich objects are rare in the asteroid belt it has been suggested that some of the Mars trojans are captured debris from a large orbit-altering impact on Mars when it encountered a planetary embryo.

Presently, this group contains 17 asteroids confirmed to be stable Mars trojans by long-term numerical simulations but only nine of them are accepted by the Minor Planet Center.

A distant minor planet, or distant object, is any minor planet found beyond Jupiter in the outer Solar System that is not commonly thought of as an "asteroid". The umbrella term is used by IAU's Minor Planet Center (MPC), which is responsible for the identification, designation and orbit computation of these objects. As of January 2025, the MPC maintains 6101 distant objects in its data base.

Most distant minor planets are trans-Neptunian objects and centaurs, while relatively few are damocloids, Neptune trojans or Uranus trojans. All distant objects have a semi-major axis (average distance from the Sun) greater than 6 AU. This threshold, which is just beyond the orbit of Jupiter (5.2 AU), ensures that the vast majority of "true asteroids" – such as the near-Earth, Mars-crosser, main-belt and Jupiter trojan populations – are excluded from the distant minor planets.

The following is a list of minor planets in ascending numerical order. Minor planets are small bodies in the Solar System: asteroids, distant objects, and dwarf planets, but not comets. As of 2022, the vast majority (97.3%) are asteroids from the asteroid belt. Their discoveries are certified by the Minor Planet Center, which assigns them numbers on behalf of the International Astronomical Union. Every year, the Center publishes thousands of newly numbered minor planets in its Minor Planet Circulars (see index). As of October 2025, the 875,150 numbered minor planets made up more than half of the 1,474,903 observed small Solar System bodies, of which the rest were unnumbered minor planets and comets.

The catalog's first object is 1 Ceres, discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801, while its best-known entry is Pluto, listed as 134340 Pluto. Both are among the 3.1% of numbered minor planets with names, mostly of people, places, and figures from mythology and fiction. (4596) 1981 QB and 841529 Jonahwoodhams are currently the lowest-numbered unnamed and highest-numbered named minor planets, respectively.

The following is a list of unnumbered minor planets in chronological order of their principal provisional designation. Contrary to their numbered counterparts, unnumbered minor planets have a poorly determined orbit due to insufficient observational data. This also includes lost minor planets which have not been observed for many years, or even decades. As of August 2023, the Minor Planet Center (MPC) accounts for 676,755 unnumbered minor planets which represent 52% of the overall minor planet population. Unnumbered minor planets can be further divided into 129,103 single-opposition objects with short observation arcs, prone to mismatch and loss, and 547,652 objects that have been observed multiple times during opposition, when astrometric conditions are most favorable. The JPL Small-Body Database gives a running total of 676,786 unnumbered minor planets.

The tables below contain 115 objects with a principal designation assigned between 1927 and 1994. Additional partial lists cover the period from 1995 to 2004. Unnumbered minor planets detected after 2004 are not listed due to their large number. The orbital uncertainty parameter (U) ranges from low ("0") to very high ("9"). For some single-opposition objects no numeric uncertainty is given ("–"), with "E" indicating an estimated, rather than determined orbital eccentricity. Furthermore, a color code is used to indicate a body's basic dynamical classification, with additional information given in columns "class" and "description and notes" (especially for near-Earth objects, Jupiter trojans and distant objects). If available, mean diameters are taken from the latest NEOWISE publication, or, if not available, estimated based on an object's absolute magnitude and displayed in italics.

This is a list of observatory codes (IAU codes or MPC codes) published by the Minor Planet Center. For a detailed description, see observations of small Solar System bodies.