J designator

I'm using the term J designator for identifiers or descriptions of astronomical objects consisting of a J followed by numbers, which are commonly used to designate astronomical objects. It describes the object's directional position using equatorial coordinates. Example number:

J162702.56+432833.9

The meaning of the numbers are as follows:

JHHMMSS.ss+DDMMSS.s

• The letter J - meaning as per J2000.0 equinox and epoch J2000.0.
• HH - hours right ascension (1/24 of a circle)
• MM - minutes right ascension (1/60 of an hour)
• SS - seconds right ascension (1/60 of a minute)
• ss - tenths/hundredths of a second right ascension
• +/- - declination above or below (north or south)
• DD - degrees declination (1/360 of a circle)
• MM - minutes declination (1/60 of a degree)
• SS - seconds declination (1/60 of a minute)
• s - tenths of a second declination

I presume the right ascension and declination are also measured from the plane of Earth equator at time J2000.0 epoch.

Thus J162702.56+432833.9 means:

At noon on January 1, 2000 GMT, the object was at 16 hours 27 minutes and 2.56 seconds right ascension and +43 degrees 28 minutes 33.9 seconds declination.

Simpler formats with less precision:

JHHMMSS+DDMMSS
JHHMM.m+DDMM.m
JHHMM+DDMM

(Note that fractional minutes can be specified.) The "HH" and "DD" fields can be reduced to a single digit, i.e., they do not need to be zero-filled.

Without the initial "J", the epoch is not specified. Sometimes an object is specified by a survey or project that discovered it along with the right ascension and declination, with or without the J, e.g., "SDSS J1517+3353" for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.