The IAU list of alternative four-letter constellation abbreviations

Ian Ridpath    Member, IAU Working Group on Star Names

Below is the International Astronomical Union’s second list of constellation names with alternative four-letter abbreviations, proposed and adopted at the IAU’s 1932 General Assembly in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Transactions of the IAU, vol. 4, pp.221–2, 1933).

This list is unsatisfactory in several ways. Firstly, there is a typo – the three-letter abbreviation for Scorpius is wrongly given as ‘Scr’ rather than Sco. Then there are stylistic errors – there should be no spaces in the three-letter abbreviations such as ‘CVn’. Added to this is the confusing substitution of the name Corona Austrina for Corona Australis. This list is best forgotten, and was repealed by the IAU in 1955.

IAU list of alternative four-letter constellation abbreviations