The newly discovered comet NEOWISE has been given the name C/2020 F3. What is the meaning of the F3 and the C in this name? The new comet C/2020 F3 was first spotted by NASA's NEOWISE satellite in March 2020.
It is now visible in the NE sky just before dawn. The C may refer to it's non-periodic nature (so far). What does the F3 mean in its name ? The orbit may be parabolic.
C means &quot;comet&quot;: it has a coma which means that volatiles are being released due to solar heating.  Other possible letters are &quot;A&quot; for asteroid,  &quot;P&quot; for (short) periodic comet, &quot;D&quot; for disappeared comet, &quot;I&quot; for interstellar object and &quot;SN&quot; for supernova.
2020 is the year of discovery
F represent the half-month of discovery, so &quot;A&quot; is the first half of January, and so on. &quot;F&quot; means &quot;the second half of March&quot;.
3 means the third comet identified in that half month, and &quot;NEOWISE&quot; is the name of the discoverer, in this case it was discovered by a space telescope that scans the sky looking for Near Earth Objects.
Such designations are considered provisional and can be replaced with a permanent number if the object is found to be in a permanent orbit. So a full designation of Halley's comet is &quot;1P/1682 Q1 (Halley)&quot; as it has permanent number 1, it is periodic, it's orbit was the first published in the second half of August 1682 by Edmund Halley.
See https://minorplanetcenter.net//iau/lists/CometResolution.html