The 14 Most Pornographic Astronomical Terms
In preparation for the Quiz-o-Tron 2000 at DragonCon this year, I was writing questions that would be of interest to my panelists. Because I had one astronomer (Phil Plait of course!) and eight immature funny people (everyone else plus Phil Plait), I decided to ask, “What’s the most pornographic-sounding astronomical term?” To seek out the answer, I of course started by Googling “pornographic astronomical terms.” The results were disappointing, so I also tried “filthy astronomical terms,” “dirty astronomy,” “sexy space things,” and many other phrases, all of which gave me pretty much nothing to go on.
So, I asked the Skepchicks (including our own resident astronomer, Dr. Nicole “Noisy” Gugliucci) to help me compile a list. And now, for the betterment of the Internet, I present it here in full:
- Accretion Disk
- Black Hole to Bulge Mass Relation
- Coronal Hole
- Double Asteroid
- Ejecta Blanket
- Greatest Elongation
- Galactic Bulge
- Globular Cluster
- Herbig-Haro Object
- Kirkwood Gaps
- Sea Floor Spreading
- Trojan Asteroid
- Virgo Cluster
- Waxing Crescent
Uranus was excluded for being too obvious.
*tee-hee!*
Featured image by Marco Lorenzi
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Uranus may be too obvious but what about the “Rings of Uranus” or is that too dirty?
There is no “too dirty” in this game.
Coronal mass ejection, anyone ??
“Apparent Magnitude”
Did you leave out Big Bang because it too obvious?
There’s my field of research: Tidal Stripping (or just “Stripping.”)
Not to mention, a lot of astronomers have a perverse sense of humor. For instance, students are regularly taught how to use the program SExtractor (for Shape Extractor).
Also, SuperMongo. Or at least its logo.
Hah, thanks for pointing that out to me. I didn’t even know it had a logo till you mentioned that. Now that I’ve seen it (top of the page here, I think we might have a winner.
Though to be fair, other scientists can probably get just as much use out of SM.
Open cluster,
Superior conjunction,
Retrograde motion,
Stellar prominence
milky way. heh. hehehehheheh …
Syzygy!
Eruptive Prominence
Umbral Flashes
Stretch-Twist-Fold Dynamo
I believe the Chandrasekhar limit was mentioned in the Kama Sutra
I can’t pass up a chance to mention “Lobate scarps” :)
Panspermia? The word has a 12 yr old giggle factor plus it is a theory of space debris colliding into thing and injecting them with life. It’s kind of sexy although not necessarily likely or probable.
Um, moon?
But, in the immortal words of the Frantics, all words are dirty words, if you say them right.
Or as Tom Lehrer had it
“When correctly viewed
Everything is lewd…”
I love you all. These are great! Keep them coming *teehee*
Considering that the abbreviation for the constellation Sextans is “Sex,” the possibilities for paper/poster titles are endless. Like “69 Sex Explodes”… Ahem. Should I being saying this at work?
Um, “dry merger”…
I am mortally offended…and yet strangely intrigued…by this thread.
See: http://amandabauer.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/dirty%20space%20news
My research is about when the central bulge’s mass is too small in comparison to the black hole. Thats when you get an ultra compact (sex) dwarf. Ok I just added e sex for the heck of it.
A geological favorite: “subduction leads to orogeny”.
I’ve always found the name of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft (failed Russian mission to Mars moon Phobos) to be amusing.
Also, “Pulsar”.
The Big Dipper
Don’t go to the seedy parts of the galaxy, or you might wind up with a Crab Nebula.
I believe ejecta blanket will be the next big fetish porn trend.
Pictures?!?!…or it didn’t happen!
One of my astrophysics lecturers often referred to “the red end” (of the visible spectrum). Always made us giggle.
Also, they’ve renamed Uranus. It’s new name, Urectum, is much less silly. (Futurama.)
ahh first Pluto now Uranus. :-(
Swollen……red………giants!!!!
This could of course be interpreted many different ways. For all you know, I could be comparing dying stars to inflamed hemmorhoids.
C’mon, no coronal mass ejection? I am disappointed in you guys.
1) Venerean.
2) Orion’s Sword. (As if.)
3) All of Jupiter’s moons.
Hot luminous bodies, aka stars.
No love for “Orbital Insertion”?
That opens up a whole new can of worms!
Re-entry?
Docking?
German Equitorial Mount
- sounds like a really kinky sex position
I always always giggle when talking about solar-mass Red Giant Branch stars. See, they go thru this phase when convection reaches deep into the star (into the core!), which stirs up all sorts of fusion products. This is known as ‘deepest penetration’.
I think that wins.
Also, having used German Equatorial Mounts – they are only attractive to masochistic ass-hats. Not my bag, but sometimes I wonder about the prof of my observing class…
Olympus Mons?
And the Olympus Mons aureole?
Annular eclipse?
Oh, and the German Equatorial Mount is so much more comfortable than the Fork Mount. Trust me.
Honestly, I loved Phil’s first guess (“Horsehead Nebula?”).
Afterglow.
“An afterglow is a wide arc of glowing light that can sometimes be seen high in the western sky at twilight; it is caused by fine particles of dust scattering light in the upper atmosphere. 2. An afterglow (also called postluminescence) is lingering radiation that remains after an event like the big bang (whose afterglow is the cosmic microwave background radiation) or a gamma ray burst (which has an x-ray afterglow).”
- Albedo.
Often confused with Libido
- Antipodal Point
People argue about whether there really is one and if so, exactly where it is.
- Apparent Motion
Use your imagination for this one
- Baily’s beads
“…(often spelled Bailey’s beads) are bead-like bursts of light that appear about 15 seconds before and after totality during a solar eclipse. Baily’s beads are caused by light shining through valleys on the edge of the moon. They were named for the British astronomer Francis Baily (1774-1844), one of the founders of the Royal Astronomical Society.”
- Crap Nebula
Not really a pornographic term but still important.
- Curiosity
“…The Mars rover Curiosity is a remote-controlled robotic vehicle sent ”
- Curvature of spacetime
-Cygnus loop
- Earth Grazer
“An Earth grazer is a meteoroid (or other space debris) that enters the Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrates, traveling nearly parallel to Earth’s surface. The meteor burns up slowly, putting on a beautiful display.”
- Foucault Pendulum
similar to tea bagging?
- Gamma Ray Burst
- Jewel Box
“The Jewel Box – NGC 4755 (also known as Kappa Crucis) is an open cluster of about 100 stars in the Southern Cross (a constellation in the Southern Hemisphere). Located near Beta Crucis, it was discovered by Abbe Lacaille when he was in South Africa from 1751 to 1752. This very young cluster is estimated to be under 10 million years old and is about 7500 light-years away from us.”
- Kuiper Belt
- LaGrange Points
- Libration
” … is a rocking movement of the Moon.”
Have we done “astronomical unit” yet?
Inflation? Exponential expansion during the Big Bang, you can’t get more.