To aid organizations in obtaining information on the effectiveness of their Telescopes, the AAS has created a vocabulary of facility keywords for Telescope facilities for use in journal articles (Astronomical archives and databases and major computational centers have been recently added). The use of a common set of facility keywords across astronomical publications will make searches for facilities significantly easier and more accurate.

Most facility keywords are just the facility’s common name or acronym but some are a combination of the facilities physical location and name or acronym. Authors may include additional text in parentheses after the facility keyword to cite facility instruments, configurations, supercomputer, etc. For example, the Wide Field Planetary Camera II on HST would be designated as HST (WFPC2). Anyone may propose new facility keywords for facilities not currently found on the list. Contact the AAS journals’ Data Editors at the AASTeX helpdesk, with the proposed facility keyword.

When preparing a LaTeX manuscript for submission, tag facility keywords with the AASTeX \facility or \facilities macros and place them in a new paragraph following the acknowledgments. Separate multiple facility keywords with commas within the same \facilities call.

Facility Tag Samples:

\facility{HST (NICMOS, STIS)}

\facilities{KAIT, Magellan:Baade (LDSS2 imaging spectrograph, Boller \& Chivens spectrograph), Magellan:Clay (LDSS2 imaging spectrograph), Swope (SITe No. 3 imaging CCD, NICMOS3 array), Du Pont (Tek No. 5 imaging CCD, WFCCD), Mayall (MOSAIC-1 wide-field camera), MMT (Blue Channel spectrograph), FLWO:1.5m (FAST), Shane (Kast Double spectrograph), Keck:I (LRIS), Keck:II (ESI)}

The table below list the 500+ facility keywords. Each keyword has a full facility name plus location, wavelength, and facility type flags to make searching easier. Click a table header to sort the list. One click will sort in descending order, two clicks will sort in ascending order, and three clicks will return to the original ordering. Hold shift and click a second row to add secondary sorting. Use the search field to find specific keywords.