List of Astronomy Acronyms - N

N

• N – (celestial object) Nova
• NACA – (organization) National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, the older name for NASA
• NAMN – (organization) North American Meteor Network
• NAOJ – (organization) National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
• NAS – (organization) Norsk Astronomisk Selskap, the Norwegian name for the Norwegian Astronomical Society
• NASA – (organization) National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• NASDA – (organization) NAtional Space Development Agency
• NBS – (organization) National Bureau of Standards, an older name for the National Institute of Standards and Technology
• NCT – (telescope) Nuclear Compton Telescope – a balloon-borne soft gamma-ray (0.2-15 MeV) telescope.
• NEAP – (spacecraft) Near Earth Asteroid Prospector, a space probe used to study a near-Earth asteroid
• NEAR – (spacecraft) Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous, a space probe used to study a near-Earth asteroid
• NEAT – (observing program) Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking
• NED – (software) NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database
• NEO – (celestial object) Near-Earth Object
  • also NEA – (celestial object) Near-Earth Asteroid
• NEMP – (celestial object) Nitrogen-Enhanced Metal-Poor star, a type of Carbon star with high amounts of nitrogen
• NEODyS – (organization) Near Earth Objects Dynamic Site, an Italian web-based service that provides information on near-Earth asteroids
• NEOIC – (organization) Near Earth Object Information Center, a United Kingdom organization that provides information on near-Earth asteroids
• NESS – (telescope) Near Earth Space Surveillance, a telescope for observing near-Earth asteroids
• NESSI – (organization) Near Earth Space Surveillance Initiative, a collaboration planning to use a ground-based telescope to observe near-Earth asteroids
• NGC – (catalog) New General Catalog
• NGST – (telescope) Next Generation Space Telescope, an older name for the James Webb Space Telescope
• NHICAT – (catalog) Northern HIPASS CATalog, the northern extension of the HIPASS catalogue
• NICMOS – (instrumentation) Near Infrared Camera / Multi Object Spectrometer, an infrared instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope
• NIMS – (instrumentation) Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer, an instrument on the Galileo spacecraft
• NIR – (astrophysics terminology) Near-InfraRed
• NIST – (organization) National Institute of Standards and Technology
• NLTE – (astrophysics terminology) Non-Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium, situations where the temperature, pressure, etc. of a system are not in equilibrium
• NLTT – (catalog) New Luyten Two-Tenths, a catalog of stars with high proper motions
• NOAA – (organization) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• NOAO – (organization) National Optical Astronomy Observatories
• NODO – (telescope) NASA Orbital Debris Observatory, a now-defunct telescope used to observe space junk and other objects
• NOT – (telescope) NOrdic Telescope
• NPS – (celestial object) North Polar Sequence, a series of stars near the North Celestial Pole once used as standards for measuring magnitudes
• NRAO – (organization) National Radio Astronomy Observatory
• NRL – (organization) Naval Research Laboratory
• NS – (celestial object) Neutron Star
• NSF – (organization) National Science Foundation
• NSO – (organization) National Solar Observatory
• NSSDC – (organization) National Space Science Data Center
• NSV – (catalog) New Suspected Variable, a catalog of variable stars
• NT – (astrophysics terminology) Non-Thermal, radiation that is not related to the emission source's temperature (such as synchrotron radiation)
• NTT – (telescope) New Technology Telescope, a telescope operated by the European Southern Observatory