We've all done it. We've all read astronomy articles on websites and magazines and been faced with the mind-blanking acronyms dreamed up by astronomers to give their projects and collaborations an abbreviated name. Some acronyms make it easier to remember the project, others achieve nothing but more confusion. Sometimes they are serious, sometimes I think they are just having a laugh at our expense.
(Acknowledgements to the cartoonist and to Cartoon Stock)
Our patron, Professor Bryan Gaensler, is the Director of CAASTRO. I can easily remember that particular 'acronym' and also that it is aimed at revolutionising wide-angle astronomy. However I can never remember that it stands for the “ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics”. I'll just stick with CAASTRO, because it works for me, even though it's roots as an acronym seem somewhat mystifying.
POSSUM sounds good and is actually a pretty reasonable acronym for the “Polarisation Sky Survey of the Universe's Magnetism;” and we have all heard of SOHO, the “ Solar and Heliospheric Observatory;” but what about some of the other devilish names these astrophysicists have dreamed up for their pet projects? What is FATBOY and where did the intriguing acronyms GADZOOKS!, FROG and SOUP come from?
I have sometimes wondered about GOD and I have now discovered that it stands for another astronomy project called “Gravity One Dimension.” Obviously, it's a project that requires plenty of faith.
Who would like to get acquainted with MONICA, MICHELLE, AMANDA, MAMA and KARMEN? We may think we know who DEBRA is but did you know it stands for “Diffuse Extragalactic Background Radiation?”
TANGOinPARIS wins a special award for being an extremely easy to remember acronym, derived from an extremely non-memorable and convoluted name for a science project; “Testing Astroparticle with the New Gev/tev Observations Positrons And electRons : Identifying the Sources.” If it was me, I would have just stopped at TANGO.
I particularly like HIS/HERS, which stands for “High Intensity Spectrograph / High Energy Range Spectrometer ” but you can work out for yourself what the acronym is for “Super Huge Interferometric Telescope!”
If you want to know more about ARMPIT, POOPSY and even BIGASS, go to https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~gpetitpas/Links/Astroacro.html which is the “Dumb Or Overly Forced Astronomical Acronyms Site.” Yes, as you can guess, this site does have it's own acronym: DOOFAAS.
This article was first published in the October edition of Prime Focus, the journal of Macarthur Astronomical Society.