In this issue / Dans ce numéro:

SKA Update
CFHT News and Updates
PRIMA Update
Canadian Gemini Office News
ngVLA Update

Editor: Dennis Crabtree

Cassiopeia is CASCA’s quarterly Newsletter, published on or near the solstices and equinoxes (March 21, June 21, September 21 and December 21).

To submit a contribution, please email cassiopeia.editors@gmail.com. All submissions must be received by the due date (usually 2 weeks in advance of publication) to be published in the next edition. I accept plain text and Word documents. Note that the formatting of your document will not be preserved. Please include any images as attachments in your email, not embedded in the text. Please include URLs in parentheses next to the word or phrase that you wish to act as link anchors.

By/par Pauline Barmby
(Cassiopeia – Winter/hivers 2016)

If you haven’t seen the Dumb Or Overly Forced Astronomical Acronyms Site (or DOOFAAS) produced by Canadian astronomer Glen Petitpas, go have a look. It’s pretty hilarious. It doesn’t yet list “H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL’s Wellspring” (H0LiCOW), which, I have to say, still makes me scratch my head.

In astronomy we like to make up names for our projects, be they instruments, telescopes, surveys, or programs. Often these are clever or silly; usually they are more memorable than the standard space agency three-letter acronym. It’s a way to make a project more fun and to perhaps get it a little more attention when colleagues first hear about it.

It’s possible to go too far with being clever, however. One person’s slightly risqué or edgy name can make others uncomfortable and send the signal that our field is unwelcoming. A well-known example is Source Extractor, a heavily-used astronomy software package that has littered hard drives with “.sex” files for decades^[1]. There are other, more recent examples that I won’t dignify by mentioning.

The CASCA meeting Code of Conduct specifically notes that “All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate.” Other conferences have similar codes. So if you give your project a racy name, the organizers could (and should!) ask you not to mention it by name. This is probably not what you want.

The next time you make up a project acronym, think about the consequences. What messages does it send? Could you talk to a group of 12-year-olds about it without them giggling? How about your university president? When the committee assessing your next job application finds the project name in a Tweet or a Facebook post, what will they think about your character? There are plenty of ways to be creative without being exclusionary, so that people smile rather than grimace when they hear about your project. Please don’t be a DOOFAAS.

^[1] Did you know that the configuration files for this program can have any extension? I call mine .cfg.

&#9808 Autumnal Equinox &#9809

Published September 23, 2014

Andromeda, as shown in an engraving from the 17th century Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia star atlas by Johannes Hevelius. Credit: U.S. Naval Observatory and the Space Telescope Science Institute.

In this issue:

ACURA News
An ALMA Update
NRC Herzberg News
Bulletin de CNRC Herzberg
Updates from the Canadian Gemini Office
Nouvelles de l’Office Gemini Canadien
Arctic Update
Continuing Evolution of JCMT
Mid-Term Review of LRP

Editors: Joanne Rosvick & Magdalen Normandeau
 
E-cass is CASCA’s quarterly Newsletter, published on or near the solstices and equinoxes (March 21, June 21, September 21 and December 21). To submit a contribution please email cassiopeia.editors@gmail.com. All submissions must be received at least one week in advance to be published in the next edition. We accept plain text and Word documents. Please include any images as attachments in your email, not embedded in the text.