Astronomical acronyms

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At the 2012 General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU; the international body for professional astronomy), the organising committee of IAU Commission 5 (Data and Information) requested the creation of a list of Astronomical Acronyms on Wikipedia. This list of acronyms and initials is not definitive but reflects current usage amongst professional astronomers.

List of Acronyms

1

1RXS First ROSAT X-ray Survey

2

2MASS 2 Micron All Sky Survey

A

AAS American Astronomical Society – the primary association of professional astronomers in the United States
ACE Advanced Composition Explorer
ADS The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory/NASA astrophysics data system, an on-line database of almost all astronomical publications
AGC Arecibo general catalog
AGN active galactic nucleus – the nucleus of a galaxy that contains an active massive black hole
AIPS Astronomical Image Processing System – a widely used software package used for processing radio astronomy data
AMANDA Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array – a neutrino telescope located at a depth of 1.5 – 1.9 km below the ice in Antarctica.
AMBER Astronomical Multi-Beam Recombiner – a near-infrared interferometric instrument at VLTI
ARCADE Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission – a balloon satellite experiment to measure the heating of the Universe by the first stars and galaxies after the big bang.
ASAS All Sky Automated Survey
ASKAP Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder – a next-generation radio telescope under construction in Western Australia. It differs from previous radio-telescopes in having many pixels at the focus of each antenna.
ATCA Australia Telescope Compact Array, a radio telescope in Australia operated by CSIRO.
ATLAS Australia Telescope Large Area Survey – a deep radio astronomical sky survey of two SWIRE fields covering a total of about 7 square degrees of sky.
AU Astronomical Unit - a unit of length, roughly the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

B

BICEP2 Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization 2
BLAST Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope – a submillimeter telescope that hangs from a high-altitude balloon, operated by a multi-university consortium headed by the University of Pennsylvania
BOOMERanG Balloon Observations Of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics

C

CANGAROO Collaboration between Australian and Nippon for a Gamma Ray Observatory in the Outback - a very high energy cosmic gamma ray observatory, located on the Woomera Prohibited Area in South Australia.^[1]
CARA Centre for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica - an organisation that operates an observatory at the South Pole, including several different telescopes from different research groups.
CARMA Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy - an array of millimetre-wave telescopes located near Owens Valley, California
CCAFS Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, an air force base in Florida where NASA launches satellites from.
CCD Charge Coupled Device - a device for the movement of electrical charge.
CDFS Chandra Deep Field South - a deep field surveyed by many telescopes at different wavelengths, first selected for deep field observations by the Chandra X-ray Observatory
CDM Cold dark matter is a hypothetical form of dark matter thought to account for 80% of matter in the Universe.
CDS Centre de données astronomiques de Strasbourg – a major astronomical data centre
CFHT Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope
CHIPSat Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer satellite
CINDI Coupled Ion-Neutral Dynamics Investigation
CMB Cosmic microwave background radiation thermal radiation filling the observable universe almost uniformly
CME – coronal mass ejection
COSMOS The Cosmic Evolution Survey a deep field surveyed by many telescopes at different wavelengths, first selected as a Hubble Space Telescope Treasury Project to survey a two square degree equatorial field with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).
CRRES Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite
CSS Catalina Sky Survey
CV – cataclysmic variable, a type of active star

D

DEC Declination
DSN Deep Space Network - network of large antennas and communication facilities.
DM dark matter – the unidentified non-baryonic matter responsible for 80% of matter in the Universe.
DSS Digitized Sky Survey

E

EGS Extended Groth Strip – a deep field surveyed by many telescopes at different wavelengths
EGRET Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope - a Gamma-ray telescope mounted on board NASA's Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory
ELAIS ESO Large-area infrared survey – a survey which named three deep fields (ELAIS-North, ELAIS-South1, ELAIS-South2) which are used for deep sky surveys
ELF Extremely Luminous Far-infrared Galaxy, a synonym for Ultra-Luminous infrared galaxy - a galaxy which emits more than 10¹² solar luminosities in the far-infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
EMU Evolutionary Map of the Universe – a planned radio survey of the sky which will use the new ASKAP radio telescope to make a radio survey of the sky, producing a catalogue of 70 million galaxies.
ESA European Space Agency
ESO European Southern Observatory
EVN European VLBI Network – a collaboration of the major radio astronomical institutes in Europe, Asia and South Africa to perform high angular resolution observations of cosmic radio sources.