[evlatests] Band Nomenclature

[Mark Claussen]

I will make a comment with trepidation and reluctance.

Will someone please tell me, without looking it up,
the wavelength (or frequency) ranges for near- to mid-
infrared bands ?   

Neither can I.   So we could say that these designations just 
serve to mystify the non-IR astronomers. My point is that, if 
you want to do infrared astronomy, you're very likely to learn 
the band designations, and what wavelength corresponds to 
what designation.  It's true they're (more-or-less) alphabetically
ordered; not true for radio designations.   Optical designations
are a bit better; we can guess what range of wavelengths U, B,
V, and R are.  But, again, without looking it up, I probably
cannot tell you what the range and effective wavelengths of 
these standard filters are.

I don't think that we are any worse off than our colleagues in 
different wavelength bands.   How many times have you heard
an optical colleague say that they observed in the 4200 Angstrom
band, as compared to saying "we observed in B" ?   And that's 
without bringing up other (non-standard) filters that get given 
other (confusing) designations (u, b, v, g, i, etc.).

I agree with Rick --- users, no matter who they are and what 
wavelength regime they are observing in, will need to do their 
homework.

Mark