The Shower Database (SD) of the Meteor Data Center (MDC) had been operating
on the basis of stream-naming rules which were too complex and insufficiently
precise for 15 years. With a gradual increase in the number of discovered
meteor showers, the procedure for submitting new showers to the database and
naming them lead to situations that were inconsistent with the fundamental role
of the SD - the disambiguation of stream names in the scientific literature.
Our aim is to simplify the meteor shower nomenclature rules. We propose a much
simpler set of meteor shower nomenclature rules, based on a two-stage approach,
similar to those used in the case of asteroids. The first stage applies to a
new shower just after its discovery. The second stage concerns the repeatedly
observed shower, the existence of which no longer raises any doubts. Our
proposed new procedure was approved by a vote of the commission F1 of the IAU
in July 2022.Comment: Submitted to: New Astronomy Review