astronomy
951 abbreviations
| Abbreviation | Meaning | |
|---|---|---|
| LIC | (celestial object) Local Interstellar Cloud, the cloud in the interstellar medium through which the solar system is currently moving | |
| LIGO | (telescope) Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, an instrument for detecting gravitational waves | |
| LINEAR | (observing program) Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research | |
| LINER | (celestial object) Low Ionization Nuclear Emission Region, a galactic nucleus that is characterized by spectral line emission from weakly ionized gas | |
| LIRG | (celestial object) Luminous Infrared Galaxy, a galaxy that is between 1011 and 1012 solar luminosities in the infrared | |
| LISA | (telescope) Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, a series of spacecraft that can be used to detect gravitational waves | |
| LLAGN | (celestial object) Low Luminosity Active Galactic Nucleus, an active galactic nucleus with a low luminosity | |
| LLNL | (organization) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory | |
| LMC | (celestial object) Large Magellanic Cloud, an irregular galaxy near the Milky Way | |
| LMS | (celestial object) Lower Main Sequence star, the less massive hydrogen-burning main-sequence stars | |
| LMXB | (celestial object) Low-Mass X-Ray Binary, an X-ray-luminous binary star system in which one of the stars is a neutron star or black hole that is stripping material away from the other star in the system | |
| LN2 | (instrumentation) Liquid Nitrogen | |
| LOFAR | (telescope) LOw Frequency ARray, for radio astronomy | |
| LONEOS | (observing program) Lowell Observatory Near-Earth Object Search | |
| LOSS | (observing program) Lick Observatory Supernova Search | |
| LOTIS | (telescope) Livermore Optical Transient Imaging System, a telescope designed to find the optical counterparts of gamma ray bursts | |
| LOTOSS | (observing program) Lick Observatory and Tenagra Observatory Supernova Searches | |
| LP | (catalog) Luyten Palomar, a catalog of proper motion measurements of stars | |
| LPI | (organization) Lunar and Planetary Institute | |
| LPL | (organization) Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, the planetary science department of the University of Arizona | |
| LPO | (organization) La Palma Observatory | |
| LPV | (celestial object) Long Period Variable, a type of variable star that changes in brightness slowly over time | |
| LRG | (celestial object) Luminous Red Galaxy, a dataset of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey that were selected on the basis of their red colors | |
| LRO | (spacecraft) Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter | |
| LSR | (astrophysics terminology) Local Standard of Rest, the frame of reference with a velocity equal to the average velocity of all the stars in the solar neighborhood, including the Sun | |
| LSST | (telescope) Large Synoptic Survey Telescope | |
| LST | (astrophysics terminology) Local Sidereal Time, the right ascension that is currently at the zenith | |
| LT | (telescope) Liverpool Telescope | |
| LTE | (astrophysics terminology) Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium, a state where variations in temperature, pressure, etc. do not vary on small scales | |
| LTP | (astrophysics terminology) Lunar Transient Phenomenon, an observed event (such as a flash of light) on the surface of the Moon | |
| LTT | (catalog) Luyten Two-Tenths, a catalog of proper motion measurements for stars | |
| M | (catalog) Messier | |
| M | (celestial object) Mira, a class of long period pulsating variable stars named after Mira, the archetype for the class | |
| MAC | (observing program) Multi instrument Aircraft Campaign, a program to study the cometary dust from the Leonids meteor showers | |
| MACHO | (celestial object/observing program/catalog) MAssive Compact Halo Object, an object in the Milky Way's halo thought to comprise part of the galaxy's dark matter; also a survey to detect these sources through gravitational lensing and the catalog of sources detected by the survey | |
| MACS | (catalogue) Magellanic Catalogue of Stars | |
| MAGIC | (telescope) Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov telescope | |
| MAP | (telescope) Microwave-background Anisotropy Probe, an older name for the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe | |
| MARVEL | (project) Multi-object Apache Point Observatory Radial Velocity Exoplanet Large-area Survey, a NASA-funded project to search for exoplanets | |
| MASER | (astrophysics terminology) Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, microwave emission that is similar to the optical emission from a laser | |
| MBA | (celestial object) Main Belt Asteroid | |
| MBH | (celestial object) Massive Black Hole | |
| MCG | (catalog) Morphological Catalog of Galaxies | |
| MCO | (spacecraft) Mars Climate Orbiter | |
| MDS | (observing program) Medium Deep Survey, a survey of high-redshift galaxies with the Hubble Space Telescope | |
| MECO | (celestial object) Magnetospheric Eternally Collapsing Object, a type of object proposed as an alternative to supermassive black holes as the central compact source within active galactic nuclei | |
| MEPAG | (organization) Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group | |
| MEPCO | (meeting) Meeting of European Planetary and Cometary Observers | |
| MER | (spacecraft) Mars Exploration Rover | |
| MGC | (catalog/observing program) Millennium Galaxy Catalogue |