Astro Acronyms

Astronomers love their acronyms! It’s almost impossible to talk about the world of astronomy without mentioning an acronym or two (or three). Here’s a few we mention often on The Cosmic Savannah.

AGN: Active galactic nucleus

ALMA: Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array

AMT: African Millimetre Telescope

ASKAP: Australian SKA Pathfinder

ATLAS: Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System

CHIME: Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment

CME: Coronal mass ejection

EHT: Event Horizon Telescope

FRB: Fast radio burst

GMRT: Giant Metre-wave Radio Telescope

GRB: Gamma-ray burst

HESS: High Energy Spectroscopic System

HI: Neutral hydrogen gas

IAU: International Astronomical Union

ICRAR: International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research

IDIA: Inter-University Data Intensive Astronomy

KAT: Karoo Array Telescope

LADUMA: Looking at the Distant Universe with the MeerKAT Array

LSST: Legacy Survey of Space and Time

MIGHTEE: MeerKAT International GHz Tiered Extragalactic Exploration

MWA: Murchison Widefield Array

OAD: Office of Astronomy for Development

SIMBA: Simulations of Black Hole Accretion

SAAO: South African Astronomical Observatory

SALT: Southern African Large Telescope

SANSA: South African National Space Agency

SARAO: South African Radio Astronomy Observatory

SETI: Search for extra-terrestrial intelligence

SKA: Square Kilometre Array

UCT: University of Cape Town

UWC: University of the Western Cape

VLA: Very Large Array

VLBI: Very long baseline interferometry