Karlsruhe Astrophysical Database of Nucleosynthesis in Stars
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What is the "Karlsruhe Astrophysical Database of Nucleosynthesis in Stars"?

The idea of an update of the compilation "Neutron cross sections for nucleosynthesis studies" from the year 2000 was hovering above our heads for a long time. But it lasted until winter 2004 that a crazy physicist (Ralf) and a far more crazy chemist (Iris) did the first step towards it. The first idea was to create "only" an experimental p-process database, but the big amount of stellar cross section measurements since 2000 showed also the necessity of an updated sequel to the previous Bao et al. database.

Why did you call this database "KADoNiS"?

Well... Iris thought that there are enough detectors, accelerators and experiments with female names, so it is time for a project with a male name. Unfortunately she could not find wise astrophysical word combinations for "BRADPITT" and "JUDELAW", so her first suggestion was "NARRCS" (for "Nuclear Astrophysics Reaction Rates and Cross Sections"). This should be pronounced like "Narziss", the male beauty queen in the Greek and Roman mythology. But due to the similarity to the German word "Nazis", and because Narziss finally drowned when trying to look at his mirror image, this abbreviation was discarded.
Then Iris tried the word "Adonis", and found that it fits for "Astrophysical Database of Nucleosynthesis in Stars". Her colleagues agreed, but someone (Michael???) asked why there is no "K" for "Karlsruhe" in the word, like in the "Karlsruher Nuklidkarte" and the "K6D6" detector at CERN/n_TOF. So the next suggestion was "KADoNiS"...

Why do you have a pyramid as logo?

This question was first asked by Michael H. from G.-N./ Germany. Neither was Adonis living in a pyramid, nor we are celebrating the Egyptians (although those guys have already been experts in Astronomy some thousand years ago). People who already have visited the beautiful city of Karlsruhe might remember that there is also a pyramid. It is located south of the castle at the "Marktplatz" and marks the tomb of the margrave Karl Wilhelm, the founder of Karlsruhe (a nice webcam view of the Marktplatz can be found under http://www.karlsruhe.de/fb7/wetter/webcam).

And where is "(K)Adonis" on this logo???

Aeeeeh... let us say that he stupidly locked himself inside the pyramid and thus could not come to the front. He is also very vain, and did not want to show his crinkles and grey hair.