Incorrect Classification of Names.asteroid_or_comet

[noedgemoonwind]

The Names.asteroid_or_comet() function incorrectly classifies asteroid names as comet when Unpacked Provisional Designations of the asteroid does not contain any space.

For example,

>>> import sbpy
>>> sbpy.__version__
'0.5.0'
>>> from sbpy.data import Names
>>> Names.asteroid_or_comet('2015 XN77')
'asteroid'
>>> Names.asteroid_or_comet('2015XN77')
'comet'

2015XN77 is a invalid designation, the function should raise a TargetNameParseError to indicate that the input cannot be parsed. Or it might be better to classify Unpacked Provisional Designations that does not contain any space like 2015XN77 as asteroid, considering the program's robustness and possible usage scenarios.

sbpy version: 0.5.0
astropy version: 6.1.0

Thank you very much for your attention to this issue.

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[mkelley]

Thank you for reporting this. We will add it to our test suite. I prefer TargetNameParseError, since the standard is to have a space after the year. Any preference from @hhsieh00 ?

[hhsieh00]

Yes, thanks for catching that! I agree with @mkelley that TargetNameParseError makes more sense, and that it should be the user's responsibility to provide well-formatted input. Playing around, I note that "2015XN77" returns "comet" as noted, but also "P2015XN77" returns "asteroid" (although "P/2015XN77" and "P/2015 XN77" both return "comet"), so I think it could get unwieldy to have sbpy be robust against all possible designations with non-standard formatting that users might attempt to classify.

[hhsieh00]

@noedgemoonwind , this should hopefully be fixed now. Please let us know if you encounter any other issues. Thanks!