StarBriefs A Dictionary of Abbreviations, Acronyms and Symbols in Astronomy, Related Space Sciences and Other Related Fields.

Transcription

1 StarBriefs 2001

2 StarBriefs 2001 A Dictionary of Abbreviations, Acronyms and Symbols in Astronomy, Related Space Sciences and Other Related Fields Compiled by Andre Heck Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory, France SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

3 A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / All information supplied in this publication is correct to the best knowledge of the compiler and publisher. While every effort has been made to ensure the reliability of the information presented in this publication, neither Kluwer Academic Publishers nor the compiler guarantees the accuracy of the data contained herein. Neither the publisher nor the compiler can accept responsibility, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this publication and neither can accept any legal responsibility, or liability, for any errors or omissions that may be made, nor can they be held liable for any damages resulting in use of the material contained herein. Note: This publication is seeded with detectors for copyright protection purposes. Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2001 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2001 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.

4 Foreword This compilation probably looks like one of the craziest things a human being could spend his or her time on. Yet nobody would wonder at someone taking a short walk every day - after twenty five years that person would have covered a surprisingly long distance. This is exactly the story behind this list, which appeared first as a few pages within the directory StarGuides (or whatever name it had at that time) and as a distinct sister publication since The idea behind this dictionary is to offer astronomers and related space scientists practical assistance in decoding the numerous abbreviations, acronyms, contractions and symbols which they might encounter in all aspects of the vast range of their professional activities, including traveling. Perhaps it is a bit paradoxical, but if scientists quickly grasp the meaning of an acronym solely in their own specific discipline, they will probably encounter more difficulties when dealing with adjacent fields. It is for this purpose that this dictionary might be most often used. Scientists might also refer to this compilation in order to avoid identifying a project by an acronym which already has too many meanings or confused definitions. Hence StarBriefs 2001, the enlarged and fully updated version of a series of dictionaries, gathers together more than 140,000 entries encountered in the literature of astronomy and space sciences, as well as of related fields such as aeronautics, aeronomy, astronautics, atmospheric sciences, chemistry, communications, computer sciences, data processing, education, electronics, energetics, engineering, environment, geodesy, geophysics, information handling, management, mathematics, meteorology, optics, physics, remote sensing, and so on. Abbreviations, acronyms, contractions and symbols in common use and/or of general interest have also been included where appropriate. The traveling scientist has also not been forgotten, with the inclusion of the codes of locations, currencies and so on. Separate sections are devoted to Greek letters, mathematical symbols, special signs and characters, as well as to entries with a numerical beginning. This compilation is essentially carried out in parallel with the permanent updating of the master files for StarGuides, a directory of astronomy, space sciences and related organizations of the world made available as a sister publication. In practice, all relevant abbreviations and acronyms encountered when scanning the literature received relating to the StarGuides directory are gathered here, the underlying principle being that they might also appear one day under the eyes of astronomers and related space scientists. We insist that these are 'real' abbreviations and acronyms, in other words that they are not constructed automatically from dictionaries as in some resources. The master files for the present compilation of StarBriefs 2001 have been made accessible as an on-line database at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) under the label StarWords (Albrecht & Heck 1994). StarBriefs files are reachable at the Centre de Donnees astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS) as the database StarBits (Heck et al. 1994) via the URL All these resources belong to the Star*s Family of Astronomy and Related Resources (Heck 1997). The associated directory StarGuides 2001 (ISBN ) and its derived databases gather together all practical data available on associations, societies, scientific committees, agencies, companies, institutions, universities, etc., and more generally organizations, involved in astronomy and space sciences. Many other types of entry have also been included such as academies, advisory and expert committees, bibliographic services, consultants, data and documentation centres, dealers, distributors, funding agencies and organizations, journals, manufacturers, meteorological services, museums, norms and standards offices, planetariums, public observatories, publishers, research institutions in related fields, software producers and distributors, etc. A. Heck Star Briefs 2001

5 vi StarBriefs 200] StarBriefs is permanently updated and new versions will be released regularly in order to cope with the continuous development of new projects and new experiments. We also allowed an extensive number of technical acronyms to enter the list, because it is often difficult to find their explanations in other sources. Deviations from standard or 'official' acronyms are also listed if their frequency of occurrence in the literature justifies it - in such cases, the recommended explanation is flagged with an asterisk. It should also be noted that the manner of abbreviation is not always carried out in the same way in all countries. The use of full points seems to be one of the features which varies the most (for instance, in some countries they might be used after contractions whilst this would not be the case in other countries). The meaning of abbreviations, acronyms, contractions and symbols should always be explained at their first occurrence in any document. It would be even more practical and helpful if authors and editors systematically tabulated them, with their explanations, at the end of the papers, chapters, reports, proceedings, books, etc., they produce. Such a policy would at least remove any ambiguity, since, as shown many times in the following pages, a given group of characters may have numerous meanings. Socio-linguists might be interested in the following table giving the sixty most frequent terms (stop words excluded) appearing in the acronym explanations out of a total of about 89,200 different words (at least two characters) for the whole dictionary. The combination of the most frequent term ('System') and of its plural ('Systems', ranking 46th) accounts for 9.53% of all words together (about 516,000). The last term of the table ('Review', ranking 60th) accounts for 0.67%. Rank Word Freq. Rank Word Freq. Rank Word Freq. 1 System Technology Integrated Data High Experiment Information Engineering Automatic Control Group Flight Center/re Interface New Program/me Committee Systems Test Support Technical International Digital Access Research Satellite Assembly Unit Development Software Management Processing Remote Space Institute University Analysis Society Energy Science Facility Optical Association Language Mission Computer Operations Standard National Equipment Design Network Advanced Power Time Office Laboratory Service European Review 602 A first conclusion from this pretty good picture of our everyday jargon is that all terms are English/American ones (in spite of the fact that the dictionary is multilingual). Whilst 'American' is not listed in the most frequent terms, 'European' does appear (ranking 40th), probably conditioned by the need to emphasize the differences with 'National' (ranking 17th) and 'International' (ranking 8th) projects and organizations. 'Space' (ranking 12th) is included in the top sixty most frequent terms, whilst 'Astronomical' is just after this leading group, in 65th position with 590 occurrences. The next directly astronomy-related term is 'Solar' in 71st position with 561 occurrences. 'Telescope' and 'Observatory' score respectively 549 and 538 appearances whilst 'Astronomy' is way behind with only 376 occurrences, a bit below 'Physics' with 412. StarBriefs 2001 A. Heck

6 Star Briefs 2001 vii When compiling catalogues such as StarGuides and StarBriefs, one cannot help but be impressed by the very broad spectrum of disciplines to which astronomy and related space sciences are linked, and by the very rich variety of techniques applied in these fields. Acknowledgements The implementation, as databases, of the Star*s Family products by the European Space Agency, the European Southern Observatory and Strasbourg Astronomical Data Centre have been strong incentives to continue and always improve these time-consuming compilations for the benefit of the best possible communication within the astronomical community, as well as between it and the outside world. June REFERENCES Albrecht, M.A. & Heck, A.: 1994, StarWords - An On-line Database of Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Contractions in Astronomy, Space Sciences, and Related Fields, Astron. Astrophys. Suppl Heck, A.: 1997, Electronic Yellow-Page Services: The Star*s Family as an Example of Diversified Publishing, in Electronic Publishing for Physics and Astronomy, Ed. A. Heck, Kluwer Acad. Pub!., Dordrecht, Heck, A., Egret, D. & Ochsenbein, F.: 1994, StarWorlds - StarBits (announcement of two databases), Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. 108, Author's address: Andre HECK Observatoire Astronomique 11, rue de l'universite F Strasbourg France Telephone: ( +33) (0) Telefax: (+33)(0) Electronic mail: starpages@astro.u-strasbg.fr WWW: A. Heck Star Briefs 2001

7 Dictionary The asterisks (*) indicate recommended explanations among several similar ones. A. Heck Star Briefs 2001