A Multilingual on-line Dictionary of Astronomical Concepts

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multilingual, interactive online dictionary of astronomical concepts with around 7000 entries, aiming to enhance understanding across disciplines and languages, especially for educational and professional use.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach to scientific dictionary creation that emphasizes multidimensional and intercultural representations of astronomical concepts.

Findings

Contains about 7000 entries covering astronomy and astrophysics.

Aims to interrelate astronomical lexicon across disciplines and languages.

Serves both educational and professional communities.

Abstract

On the occasion of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009), we present a new interactive dictionary of astronomy and astrophysics, which contains about 7000 entries. This interdisciplinary and multicultural work is intended for professional and amateur astronomers, university students in astrophysics, as well as terminologists and linguists. A new approach is pursued in the formation of a scientific dictionary, which aims to display additional dimensions of astronomical concepts. Although Virtual Observatories recognize the necessity of efforts to define basic astronomical concepts and establish their reciprocal relations, so far they have mainly been confined to archiving observational data. The present dictionary could be an incipient contribution to cover and inter-relate the whole astronomical lexicon beyond subfields.