Simbad.query_object() gives no result if a letter is capitalized when querying the star "K Tau"

[kfkaplan]

I ran into a strange issue when trying to query Simbad with astroquery for the star "k Tau." When querying with the K being upper case as follows

from astroquery.simbad import Simbad
Simbad.reset_votable_fields()
Simbad.add_votable_fields('ids')

query_name = Simbad.query_object('K Tau')

I get the following error.

WARNING: NoResultsWarning: The request executed correctly, but there was no data corresponding to these criteria in SIMBAD [astroquery.simbad.core]

If I run it with the k lower case, it works. I can force the string to be lower case, but I thought it would be best to raise an issue for this.

I tried on the simbad website itself, and it didn't matter there if the K was capitalized or not.

[ManonMarchand]

I can reproduce, we're investigating. Thanks for opening the issue!

[ManonMarchand]

So I got an answer from the team. The fact is that these objects follow the naming convention "Early Modern Expansion" from this IAU nomenclature: https://iauarchive.eso.org/public/themes/naming_stars/

As such, a small k means that you're looking for a star while a big K means a non-stellar object. The current behavior of the API is the intended one and the fact that the webpages are more permissive is a bit "buggy".