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I've seen a lot of exoplanet names and I haven't noticed much consistency in the separation of the parent star's designation from the letter representing the exoplanet with a space: e.g., WASP-7b vs. WASP-7 b. I've noticed that Wikipedia appears to do this rather randomly (see the entries in this category, for example). NASA's Exoplanet Catalog consistently leaves a space between the star's designation and the exoplanet's letter. See also Caltech's NASA Exoplanet Archive. A page at the International Astronomical Union's website explaining exoplanet naming conventions doesn't specifically discuss the spacing issue, although it does seem to use them randomly (e.g., "CoRoT-7b" and "GJ 1214 b"). I'm wondering if there's some kind of standard for the spacing issue. Perhaps certain catalogs consistently use spaces while others consistently don't? Nythar (💬-🍀) 05:22, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The section "Scientific Designations" on the IAU's website uses "Kepler-186f", "CoRoT-7b", "Qatar-1b" and "Kepler-34(AB)b", but all 164 names in the section "List of Exoplanet Names" have a space before the planet letter, such as "HAT-P-12 b" and "WASP-17 b". Obviously, when the parent star's designation ends on a letter, there has to be a space; we don't want to send a generation ship to Proxima Centaurib or they might get lost when the Nth generation cannot find Proxima Centaurib in the ship's star catalogue. For this reason alone, the obvious and easy consistent rule is to always use a space. Furthermore, for the non-cognoscenti "WASP-7b" might create the impression that this designates item 7b in a catalogue of the findings of the WASP project. That said, the discoverers of this exoplanet themselves wrote "WASP-7b" without a space in the report on their find.^[1]  ‑‑Lambiam 11:31, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking as an amateur, and one-time aspiring professional, astronomer, I think what is going on is that the relevant catalogues, scientific papers and journal articles are generally compiled and written by astronomers for astronomers, who in context all understand exactly what is being discussed and referenced, so there is no compelling need for a universally observed stylistic convention. (Though as a former science book editor, I would have expected an individual journal, say, to have one as part of its House style manual.) Perhaps one day some sub-committee of the IAU will pronounce on the matter. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.8.123.129 (talk) 07:44, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]