So I googled for some dumb-ass astronomical names and came up with this gem:
My favourites are bolded....
In case you were wondering, these ARE actual names used in astronomy, although I haven't encountered some of the more outlandish ones. It would appear that astronomers have WAY too much time on their hands...Dumb Or Overly Forced Astronomical Acronyms Site (or DOOFAAS)
Acronym Solution
2D-FRUTTI 2-D Photon Counting System (I swear, I didn't make this up)
2MASS Two Micron All-Sky Survey
ACBAR Arcminute Cosmology Bolometer Array Receiver ("It's a photon trap!")
ACE Advanced Composition Explorer
ADONIS Adaptive Optics Near-Infrared System
AESOP An Extensive Symbolic Optics Package
AGAPE Andromeda Galaxy and Amplified Pixel Experiment
AIM Astrometric Interferometry Mission
AIPS Astronomical Image Processing System
ALEXIS Array of Low Energy X-ray Imaging Sensors
ALFA Adaptive optics with Lasers For Astronomy
ALPO Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers
AMANDA Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array
AMASE Astrophysics Multispectral Archive Search Engine
AMBER Astronomical MultiBEam Recombiner
ANDREAS Advanced Name Designer REgarding Astronomical Systems (Bryan Gaensler's astro-acro informant)
ANIS All Neutrino Interaction Simulation (LOL!)
ANTARES Astronomy with a Neutrino Telescope and Abyss environmental RESearch (whatever that means)
APHID Atmospheric PHase Inference Device
APT Asia Pacific Telescope
ARCADE Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission
ARCSEC Association of Roman Catholics for the promotion of Space Exploration and Colonization
ARIES Arizona Infrared Imager and Echelle Spectrograph
ARISE Advanced Radio Interferometry between Space and Earth
ARISTOTELES Applications and Research Involving Space Technologies Observing the Earth's field from Low Earth orbiting Satellite
ARTEMIS Advanced Relay TEchnology MISsion
ASTER Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emmision and Reflection
AST/RO Antarctic Submillimeter Telescope and Remote Observatory
ATLAS Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science
AURA Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy
AVIRIS Airborne Visible/InfraRed Imaging Spectrometer
BACODINE BATSE COordinate DIstribution NEtwork (BATSE=Burst And Transient Source Experiment)
BAD Balmer-Absorption-Dominated (Nuclei)
BAM Balloon-bourne Anisotropy Measurement
BaR-SPOrt BAlloon-bourne Radiometers for Sky Polarisation ObseRvaTions (honestly)
BICEP Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (feel the burn)
BIGRAT BIcentennial Gamma RAy Telescope
BiSON Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network
BLAST Balloonborne LargeAperture Submillimeter Telescope
BLOSM Broad band and Large area x-ray Omni Sky Monitor
BOOJUMS Blue Objects Observed Just Undergoing Moderate Starbursts (`Boojums' is from Lewis Carrolls poem ``The Hunting of the Snark'')
BOOMERanG Balloon Observations Of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics
CAFE CAssegrain Fiber Environment
CANGAROO Collaboration between Australian and Nippon for a Gamma Ray Observatory in the Outback (krazy!)
CARA Centre for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica
CARMA Combined Array for Research in Millimetre-wave Astronomy
CASA-BLANCA Chicago Air Shower Array - Broad LAteral Non-imaging Cerenkov Array
CASPIR Cryogenic Array SPectrometer ImageR
CASTLES Cfa/Arizona Space Telescope LEns Survey
CAT Cosmic Anisotropy Telescope
ChAOS Chicago Adaptive Optics System
CHARA Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy
CHASE Coronal Helium Abundance Spacelab Experiment
CHIPS Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer
CIRPASS Cambridge InfraRed PAnoramic Survey Spectrograph
CIRRIS Cryogenic InfraRed Radiance Instrument for Shuttle
CIRSI Cambridge InfraRed Survey Instrument (as in Cerse, the daughter of sun god Helius)
CISCO Cooled Infrared Spectrograph and Camera for OHS
COAST Cambridge Optical Aperature Synthesis Telescope
COBRA Caltech-OVRO Broadband Reprogrammable Array (an AMFA)
COBRAS/SAMBA COsmic Background Radiation Anisotropy Satellite/SAtellite to Measure Background Anisotropies
COHSI Cambridge OH Suppresion Instrument
COINS CSOs Observed In Northern Sky
COMPLETE COodinated Molecular Probe Line Extinction Thermal Emissio (survey)
COMPLEX COMmittee on Planetary and Lunar spave EXploration
CORNEA Corrective Optics R? N? Emmending Atmosphere (would you believe on IRIS ?)
COSMOS CoOrdinates, Sizes, Magnitudes, Orientations, and Shapes
COSTAR Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement
COLA Compact Objects in Low power Agns
COME ON+ ? (Adaptive Optics on ESO 3.6 m Telescope)
COMPASS COsmic Microwave Polarization At Small Scales
CONICA COude Near Infrared CamerA
COW Committee Of the Wise (scheduling committee for WET)
COYOTES Coordinated Observations of Young ObjecTs from Earthbound Sites
CREAM Cosmic Radiation Effects and Activatiom Monitor
CUBIC Cosmic Unresolved Background Instrument using CCD's
DAISY Data Acquisition and Interpretation System
DASI Degree Angular Scale Interferometer/td>
DEBRA Diffuse Extragalactic Background RAdiation
DEEP Deep Extragalactic Evolutionary Probe
DEERS Deeply Embedded Energetic Radio Sources
DEIMOS Deep Extragalactic Imaging Multi Object Spectrograph
DENIS DEep Near Infrared Survey of the Southern Sky
DIMES DIffuse Microwave Emission Survey
DIRT Dust InfraRed Toolbox
DIVA Deutsches Interferometer fuer Vielkanalphotometry und Astrometrie
DONUT Direct Observation of NU Tau
DUO Disk Unseen Objects
DUPLEX DUst-Prominent Longitudinally-EXtended
EGG Evaporating Gaseous Globule
EGRET Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope
EIDERS Externally Ionized Disks in the Environs of Radiation Sources
ELFS Extremely Luminous Far-infrared Sources
EROS Expérience de Recherche d'Objects Sombres
ESP ESO Slice Project [This is incidentally an AMFA (Acronym Made From Acronyms; see Chris Taylor's Homepage for more info.)]
ETC Explosive Transient Camera
EURECA EUropean REtrievable CArrier
FAME Fizeau Astrometric Mapping Explorer
FAST Fast Auroral SnapshoT explorer
FAUST FAr-Ultraviolet Space Telescope
FIBRE Fabry-perot Interferometer Bolometer Research Experiment
FIFI Far Infrared Fabry-perot Interferometer
FIGARO French Italian GAmma Ray Observatory
FILM Far Infrared Line Mapper
FIRST Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-centimeters
FITS Flexible Image Transport System
FLAIR Fibre Linked Array Image Reformatter
FLAMINGOS FLoridA Multi-object Imaging Near-infrared Grism Observational Spectrometer (eek)
FLIERS Fast, Low-Ionization Emission RegionS
FORCAST Faint Object infraRed CAmera for the SOFIA Telescope (Also an AMFA; Thanks to Luke Keller)
FORT Foyer Optimise pour le RadioTelescope (FORT="strong" in French)
FOXES Fluctuating Optical and X-ray Emitting Sources
FRED Fast RisE, rapid Decay (pulse structure in pulsars)
FROG Faint Red Outlier Galaxy
FUC Far Ultraviolet Camera
FUCR Far Ultra-Chromatic Rocket (thanks to Will Marchant)
FUSE Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer
GAIA Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics
GASP Gamma-rays At the South Pole
GASP Guide star selection system Astrometric Support Package
GEMS Glasses Embedded Metals and Sulfides
GENIUS GErmanium liquid NItrogen Underground Setup
GIMP Geo-magnetically induced Image Motion Problem (on HST)
GIPSY Groningen Image Processing SYstem
GLIMPSE GLobal IMPlicit SEarch
GLIMPSE Galactic Legacy Infrared MidPlane Survey Extraordinaire
GOES Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites
GOD Gravity One Dimension (The paper was entitled `The likelihood of GODs' existence'...)
GONG Global Oscillations Network Group
GNAT Global Network of Astronomical Telescopes
GRAPE GRAvity PipE
GRASP Gamma-Ray Astronomy with Spectroscopy and Positioning
HARP Hermite AcceleratoR Pipe
HAWAII HgCdTe Astronomical Wide Area Infrared Imager
HEAD High Energy Astrophysics Division
HEAT High-Energy Antimatter Telescope
HELLAS High-Energy Large Area Survey (I don't know where the extra L came from, but I think Hellas is the ancient name for Greece.)
HERB High Energy Resolution Burst
HIFI Hawaii Imaging Fabry-perot Interferometer
HIS/HERS High Intensity Spectrograph / High Energy Range Spectrometer
HO-BAGS Hubble Observatory BAckground Galaxy Survey
HOEs Holographic Optical Elements
IDEA Initiative to Develop Education through Astronomy
INTEGRAL INTErnational Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory
IOTA Infrared and Optical Telescope Array
IRAC InfraRed Array Camera
IRIS Infra Red Imager Spectrograph
JACARA Joint Australian Centre for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica
JIVE Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe
KARMEN Karlsruhe Appleton Rutherford Medium Neutrino Experiment
KASCADE KArlsruhe Shower Core and Array DEtector
KISS KPNO International Spectroscopic Survey
KNAC Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium
KOSMA Kölner Observatorium für Submillimeter Astronomie
LACE Low power Atmospheric Compensation Experiment
LAMOST Large sky Area Mulit Object fiber Spectrscopic Telescope
LEST Large Earth-based Solar Telescope
LIGHT Light Interferometer satellite for the studies of Galactic Halo Tracers
LINERS Low Ionization Nuclear Emission-line Regions
LIRIS Long slit Intermediate Resolution Intrared Spectrograph
LISA Laser Interfeter Space Antenna
MACHO MAssive Compact Halo Objects
MACRO Monopoles, Astrophysics, and Cosmic Ray Observatory
MAGNUM Multicolor Active Galactic Nuclei Monitoring project
MAMA Multi-Anode Microchannel Array
MAMBO MAx-planck-Millimeter-BOlometer
MAP Microwave Anisotropy Probe
MAPS Minnesota Automated Plate Scanner
MARTINI Multi-Aperture Real Time Image NormalIzation system
MASSIF Masses and Stellar Systems with InterFerometry
MAX Millimeter wave Anisotropy eXperiment
MAXIMA Millimeter wave Anisotropy eXperiment IMaging Array
MBONE Multicast BackbONE
MERLIN Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network
MIAOW Minimum Inertia Adaptive Optics Widget
MICE Muons in ICE
MICHELLE Mid-Infrared eCHELLE spectrograph
MIDAS Munich Image Data Analysis System
MIME Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
MIRA Mitaka optical and Infra-Red interferometer Array
MIRAC Mid InfraRed Array Camera
MIRACLE Mid-InfraRed Array Camera of Least Effort
MIRIAD Multichannel Image Reconstruction, Image Analysis and Display
MIRLIN Mid-InfraRed Large Imager (the 'N' doesn't stand for anything!)
MOMI Manchester Occulting Mask Imager
MONICA MONtreal Infrared CAmera
MOSAIC MDM/Ohio State/ALADDIN Infrared Camera (really!)
MOST Microvariability and Oscillations of STars
MOST Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope
MUNICS MUnich Near-Infrared Cluster Survey (awesome)
MUSICOS MUlit-SIte COordinated Spectroscopy
NEAT Near Earth Asteriod Tracking (telescope)
NIRI Near InfraRed Imager
NITE Near-Infrared Telescope Experiment
NOT Nordic Optical Telescope
OASIS Optically Adaptive System for Imaging Spectroscopy
OGLE Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment
OPAL Orbiting Picosat Automatic Launcher
OPUS Observations support/post-observation data Processing Unified System (good god!)
ORFEUS Orbiting and Retrievable Far and Extreme Ultraviolet Spectrometer
OSCAR Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio
OSCIR Observatory Spectrometer Camera for the InfraRed
OSIRIS Optical Space Interferometer: Russian Instrument for Stellar astronomy
OWL Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (so big, it's ridiculous)
PHEBUS Payload for High Energy BUrst Spectroscopy
PIG Partially Ionized Globule
PINOCCHIO PINpointing Orbit-Crossing Collapsed HIerarchial Objects (Egad!)
PIQUE Princeton IQU Experiment
PIT Phase 1 Tool (for Gemini, replacing POOPSY)
PLANET Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork
POEM Polar Orbiting Earth Mission
POINTS Precision Optical INTerferometer in Space
POLAR Polarization Observations of Large Angular Regions (what's an angular region?)
POLARBEAR POLARization of the Background millimEter bAckground Radiation (very weak)
POOPSY Phase One Observing Proposal SYstem
POST POlar Stratosperic Telescope
PRESTO Project to Re-Engineer Space Telescope Observing
QUEST Q and U Extra-galactic Sub-mm Telescope
QUIRC QUick InfRared Camera
RASSCALS ROSAT All-Sky Survey-Center for Astrophysics Loose Systems (yet another AMFA)
RATTS Run Away T-Tauri Stars
RESCEU RESearch Center for the Early Universe
RICE Radio Ice Cerenkov Experiment
SAGA Solar Array Gain Augmentation
SAGES Study of the Astrophysics of Globular clusters in Extragalactic Systems
SARA Satellite pour Astronomie Radio Amateur
SASS Standard Analysis Software System
SAX Satellite per Astronomia X (its Italian)
SAURON Spectroscopic Areal Unit for Research on Optical Nebulae (mmmm, nerdy)
SCAR Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research
SCORE SIRTF-CORnell Echelle
SCUBA Submillimeter Common-User Bolometer Array
SEQUOIA SEcond QUabbin Optical Imaging Array
SERENDIP Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations
SERTS Solar EUV Rocket Telescope Spectrograph
[/b]SHARC Submillimeter High Angular Resolution Camera (eats SCUBA alive they claim)[/b]
SHARE Space station Heat pipe Advanved Radiator Element
SHARP System for High-Angular-Resolution Pictures
SHEEP Search for the High Energy Extragalactic Population
SiEGMuND Simulation of Events with Geant for Muon and Neutrino Detectors
SIGMA Systeme d'Imagerie Gamma a Masque Aleatoire
SIMBAD Set of Identifications, Measurements and Bibliography for Astronomical Data
SINFONI the SINgle Faint Object Near-infrared Investigation
SINGS SIRTF Infrared Nearby Galaxy Survey (an AMFA)
SIMPLE Superheated Instrument for Massive ParticLe Experiments
SLAP Space Link Access Protocol
SMAC Streaming Motions of Abel Clusters
SMIRFS Sub Millimeter InfraRed Fiber-feed System (or something)
SNAP SuperNova Acceleration Probe
SOAR Southern Observatory for Astrophysical Research
SOFIA Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy
SODA Small Objects DAtabase
SOHO SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory
SOLE Star-Obvious Low-level-Elongated
SOLSTICE SOLar STellar Irradiance Comparison Experiment
SONG Stellar Oscillations Network Group
SONG Survey Of Nearby Galaxies
SOONSPOT Solar Observing Optical Network / Solar Patrol On Tape
SOUP Solar Optical Universal Polarimeter
SPAN Space Physics and Analysis Network
SPARTAN Shuttle Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for AstroNomy
SPASE South Pole Air ShowEr array
SPAS SPace VLBI Assistance Software
SPICE Spectro-Photometric Infrared Celestrial Explorer
SPIFFI SPectrometer for Infrared Faint Field Imaging
SPIFI South Pole Imaging Fabry-perot Interferometer
SPIRAL Surface Photometry Interactive Reduction and Analysis Library
SPIRAL Segmented Pupil/ Imaging Array Lenses
SPIRE Spectral and Photometric Imaging REceiver for herschel
SPOrt Sky Polarization Observatory (why not ObseRvaTory?)
SPOT Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre
SPYBAL SPectrum Y-BALance
SQIID Simultaneous Quad-color Infrared Imaging Device
SQUID Superconducting QUantum Interference Device
SQUIRT Satellite QUIck Research Testbed
STACEE Solar Tower Atmospheric Cherenkov Effect Experiment
STEP Solar Terrestrial Energy Program
SUMER Solar Ultraviolet Measurements of Emitted Radiation
SURF SCUBA User Reduction Facility
SUSI Sydney University Stellar Interferometer
SUSPECT Sydney University SPECTrograph
SuZIE Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Infrared Experiment
STEFFI Spectrograph-TElescope Fibre-Feed Interface
SWAN Solar Wind Anisotropy Experiment
TAROT Telescope a Action Rapide pour les Objets Transitoires
TAU Thousand Astronomical Unit
THUMPER Two HUndred Micron PhotometER
TIM Telescope Image Modelling
TIM (translates to) Mexican Infrared-optical Telescope
TNTCAM Ten aNd Twenty Micron CAMera
TOMBO Transient Observatory for Microlensing and Bursting Objects (Japanese project; telescopes resemble compound insect eyes; Tombo is Japanese for dragonfly)
TOMS Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer
TOOT TexOx-1000 (Oh, I get it, Texas-Oxford One Thousand; weak)
T-RECS Thermal REgion Camera System
UNSWIRF University of New South Wales Infrared Fabry-Perot (after an unpopular premier of NSW named Barry Unsworth)
VERITAS Very large Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System
VIRGO Variability in Irradiance and Gravity Oscillations
VIRIS Visual-InfraRed Imaging System
VOIR Venus Orbiting Imaging Radar (voir is french for "to see")
WARPS Wide Angle ROSAT Pointed Survey
WASP Wideband Analog SPectrometer
WATCH Wide Angle Telescope for Cosmic Hard x-rays
WET Whole Earth Telescope
WHAM Wisconsin H-Alpha Mapper
WIMP Weakly Interacting Massive Particles
WIRE Wide-field InfraRed Explorer
WISARD Web Interface for Searching Archival Research Data
WISP Wide field Imaging Symbiotic Program
WITS Web Infrared ToolShed (has DIRT on it)
WOMBAT Wavelength-Oriented Microwave Background Analysis Team (Go Team! They're playing the Molecular Astrophysics Team for the championship later this week.)
WUPPE Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment
YORIC Yet another Optimal Resolution Image Constructor (Alas...)
-- Asuka
