sometimes telescopes are named after famous scientists, or people who donate loads of money to build them, or an acronym relating to the type of science it will do, etc... as this sixty symbols episode on the diameter of telescopes illustrates, we are severely lacking in creative new telescope names, considering the big one they talk about is the ELT which stands for "extremely large telescope!"
so on twitter, a friend suggested that if we name the ELT something a bit more attention-grabbing for current times, maybe we could guarantee funding! he suggested OBAMA, and like any good scientific name, we have been trying to turn OBAMA into an acronym!! mine is OBAMA: Overwhelmingly Big Aperture Measures All!
NASA recently had a contest to name a new Mars rover. the winner was a 12-year-old girl from kansas who suggested possibly my favorite name for any tool of astronomy: curiosity.
can you think of any good names for telescopes or other universe explorers?
8 comments:
what about naming them after Greek or Roman Gods? There are some interesting names in there, as well as every God or Goddess has a correspondence to a planet or star!
I also loved the name Curiosity :-).
That's huge!
If you're looking for publicity, Colbert might be the best choice :)
Mankind in the Mirror, or Super Huge Incredible Telescope.
Overwhelmingly
Big
Aperture
LOL
I think ESO are planning to have some kind of competition to get the public involved in naming the ELT - but of course Council would still have the final word. I just want something that's easy to pronounce, saying E-ELT 20 times in every talk I'm giving at the moment, and watching half the audience roll their eyeballs or snigger at the dumbness of the name, is really tedious....
monica lewinsky :)
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