C
- C - Cambridge Catalog, 2C (Second Cambridge Catalog), 3C (Third Cambridge Catalog)
- CADC – (organization) Canadian Astronomy Data Centre
- CAHA – (organization) Centro Astronómico Hispano Alemán, a German-Spanish Astronomical Centre
- CANDELS – (survey) Cosmic Assembly Near-Infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey or Cosmic Assembly and Dark Energy Legacy Survey
- CAPS – (instrumentation) Cassini Plasma Spectrometer, an instrument on the Cassini spacecraft
- CARA – (organization) California Association for Research in Astronomy
- CARA – (organization) Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica
- CASCA – (organization) Canadian Astronomical Society / Société canadienne d'astronomie (the name is officially bilingual)
- CASS – (organization) Center for Advanced Space Studies
- CBR – (celestial object) Cosmic Background Radiation
- CC – (celestial object) Candidate Companion, a newly detected observed object that initially appears to orbit another celestial object
- CCD – (instrumentation) Charge Coupled Device
- CCD – (astrophysics terminology) – Color-Color Diagram, a plot that compares the differences between magnitudes in different wave bands
- CCDM – (catalog) Catalog of Components of Double and Multiple Stars
- CCO – (catalog) Catalogue of Cometary Orbits
- CCO – (celestial object) Central Compact Object, a compact star in the center of a planetary nebulae
- CCS – (celestial object) Cool Carbon Star
- CD – (catalog) Cordoba Durchmusterung
- CDIMP – (catalog) Catalogue of Discoveries and Identifications of Minor Planets
- CDM – (astrophysics terminology) Cold Dark Matter, any model for structure formation in the universe that characterize "cold" particles such as WIMPs as dark matter
- CDS – (organization) Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg
- CELT – (telescope) – California Extremely Large Telescope, an older name for the Thirty Meter Telescope
- CEMP – (celestial object) Carbon-Enhanced Metal-Poor, a type of carbon star
- CEMP-no – (celestial object) Carbon-Enhanced Metal-Poor star with no enhancement of elements produced by the r-process or s-process nucleosynthesis
- CEMP-r – (celestial object) Carbon-Enhanced Metal-Poor star with an enhancement of elements produced by r-process nucleosynthesis
- CEMP-s – (celestial object) Carbon-Enhanced Metal-Poor star with an enhancement of elements produced by s-process nucleosynthesis
- CEMP-r/s – (celestial object) Carbon-Enhanced Metal-Poor star with an enhancement of elements produced by both r-process and s-process nucleosynthesis
- CEP – (celestial object) CEPheid, a type of pulsating variable star
- CEPS – (organization) Center for Earth and Planetary Studies
- CfA – (organization) Center for Astrophysics
- CFHT – (telescope) Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope
- CFRS – (observing program), Canada-France Redshift Survey
- CG – (astrophysics terminology) Center of Gravity
- CG – (celestial object) Cometary Globule, a Bok globule that show signs of a tail-like extension
- CG – (celestial object) Compact Galaxy
- CGCS – (celestial object) Cool Galactic Carbon Star
- CGRO – (telescope) Compton Gamma Ray Observatory
- CGSS – (catalog) Catalogue of Galactic S Stars
- CHARA – (organization) Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy
- CIAO – (software) Chandra Interactive Analysis of Observations, software for processing Chandra X-ray Observatory data
- CIAO – (instrumentation) Coronagraphic Imager with Adaptive Optics, an instrument for the Subaru Telescope
- CIBR – (celestial object) Cosmic Infrared Background Radiation
- also CIB
- CIDA – (instrumentation) Cometary Interplanetary Dust Analyzer, an instrument on the Stardust spacecraft
- CINEOS – (observing program) Campo Imperatore Near-Earth Object Survey
- CIO – (catalog) Catalog of Infrared Observations
- CISCO – (instrumentation) Cooled Infrared Spectrograph and Camera for OHS, an instrument for the Subaru Telescope
- CM – (astrophysics terminology) Center of Mass
- CMBR – (celestial object) Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
- also CMB, CBR, MBR
- CMC – (catalog) Carlsberg Meridian Catalogue
- CMD – (astrophysics terminology) Color-Magnitude Diagram, the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram or similar diagrams
- also CM
- CNB – (celestial object) Cosmic Neutrino Background
- CNES – (organization) Centre Nationale d'Etudes Spatiales, the French Space Agency
- CNO – (astrophysics terminology) Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen, a sequence of nuclear fusion processes
- CNR – (organization) Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
- CNSR – (spacecraft) Comet Nucleus Sample Return
- COBE – (telescope) Cosmic Background Explorer, a space telescope used to study the cosmic microwave background radiation
- COHSI – (instrumentation) Cambridge OH-Suppression Instrument
- Col – (catalog) Collinder catalog
- COMICS – (instrumentation) COoled Mid-Infrared Camera and Spectrometer, an instrument for the Subaru Telescope
- CGRO – (telescope) COMPton TELescope, another name for the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory
- COROT – (telescope) COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits, a space telescope for detecting extrasolar planets
- COSPAR – (organization) COmmittee on SPAce Research
- COSTAR – (instrumentation) Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement, corrective optics for the Hubble Space Telescope
- CP – (astrophysics terminology) Chemically Peculiar, stars with peculiar chemical compositions
- CPD – (catalog) Cape Photographic Durchmusterung
- CRAF – (spacecraft) Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby
- CSA – (organization) Canadian Space Agency
- CSBN – (organization) Committee for Small-Body Nomenclature
- CSE- (celestial object) Circumstellar Envelope, a roughly spherical planetary nebula formed from dense stellar wind if not present before the formation of a star.
- CSI – (catalog) Catalog of Stellar Identification, a compilation of the catalogs, BD, CD, and CPD
- CSO – (telescope) Caltech Submillimeter Observatory
- CSPN – (celestial object) Central Star of Planetary Nebula
- also CSPNe (plural form of CSPN)
- CSS – (observing program) Catalina Sky Survey
- CST – (astrophysics terminology) ConStanT, non-variable stars
- CSV – (catalog) Catalog of Suspected Variables
- CTIO – (telescope/organization) Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory
- CTTS – (celestial object) Classical T-Tauri Star
- CV – (celestial object) Cataclysmic Variable, a type of variable binary star system that contains a white dwarf and a companion star that changes
- CW – (celestial object) Cepheid W Virginis, a class of Cepheids named after W Virginis, the archetype for the class
- CWA – (celestial object) Cepheid W Virginis A, a subclass of CW stars that that vary in brightness on timescales of less than 8 days
- CWB – (celestial object) Cepheid W Virginis B, a subclass of CW stars that vary in brightness on timescales greater than 8 days
- CXBR – (celestial object) Cosmic X-ray Background Radiation
- CXO – (catalog) Chandra X-ray Observation, a catalog based from the Chandra space telescope
Read more about this topic: List Of Astronomy Acronyms