TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 10251 SUBJECT: A small revision to the GRB-naming convention DATE: 09/12/07 22:23:42 GMT FROM: Scott Barthelmy at NASA/GSFC S.D. Barthelmy (GSFC), N. Gehrels (GSFC), W. Paciesas (UAH), C. Kouveliotou (MSFC) J. McEnery (GSFC), J. Chiang (SLAC) K. Hurley (UCB), N. Kawai (Tokyo Tech), V. Pal'shin (IOFFE), D. Frederiks (IOFFE), M. Tashiro (Saitama U.), K. Yamaoka (Aoyama Gakuin U.), S. Mereghetti (INAF/IASF Milano), M. Feroci (INAF/IASF Rome), E. Del Monte (INAF/IASF Rome), M. Marisaldi (INAF/IASF Bologna), S.K. Chakrabarti (SNBNCBS and ICSP, Kolkata, India) report: This is to announce that the GRB-producing missions have agreed to a slight change in the way GRBs are named. Starting 01 Jan 2010 the first GRB (on a given day) that is published will automatically be given the designation of the "A" burst. In the past the first burst published in a given day was not given a letter (i.e. just plain GRB YYMMDD), and was only given the "A" designation if a second burst was detected on that day (and also published, aka the "B" burst). And any later publications on the first burst were then given the "A" suffix. This new naming scheme follows the method used for supernova; the first SN of the year is always given the "A" designation, the second "B" and so on. The motivation for this change to the naming convention is to avoid the confusion in the literature when the initial citations of the "first" burst start out with no letter and then later citations have the "A" suffix. This should also help with the authors of the first burst to get the correct designation. This revised method of naming bursts will start on 01 January 2010. And to reiterate the rest of the method of naming GRBs (this part is staying the same): GRBs are named in the order of puplication, not the time-order of their detections. And "publishing" a burst is defined by a GCN Circular, ATEL, IAU Circular, or even a journal publication. To be equally clear, a GCN Notice does not constitute a publication of the burst. The important distinction being that a Circular, etc, involves off-line human-in-the-loop analysis of the event to determine if it a real GRB (or something non-GRB), whereas a Notice is automated and contains non-GRB events. The humans make the determination and give the name "GRB YYMMDDA". These aspects of how and when a burst is named are staying the same. The only change is to automatically give the "A" designation to the first burst, even if there is no second burst that day.