Ansa

Ansa or ANSA can refer to any of the following:

* Ansa (queen), 8th century, wife of Desiderius, king of the Lombards
* Ansa (Hinduism) or IAST|Aṃśa in Hinduism, a solar deity and one of the Adityas.
* "ansa" as part of Arabic words means "constant"

As the acronym ANSA:
* Afghan National Standards Association, the ISO representative organization for Afghanistan.
* Alliance of Norwegian Students Abroad
* Applied Neuroscience Society of Australasia
* Australian Network of Student Anthropologists, student-run arm of the Australian Anthropological Society.
* ANSA, an Italian manufacturer of OEM exhaust systems for automobiles.
* ANSA (news agency), Italian news agency
** Ansa Mediterranean or ANSAmed, section of the above
* ANSA Pre-processor, commercial pre-processing software (Automatic Net-generation for Structural Analysis).
* The "Planet of the Apes" equivalent of NASA; it is never made clear in the movies what the letters actually stand for.

"ansa" is Latin for "handle". It has several uses derived from this meaning:
* In anatomy, the word is applied to nervous structures which resemble loops (for example the ansa lenticularis, ansa cervicalis, ansa nephroni or the ansa of the tympanal organ).
* In archaeology it is used for the engraved and ornamented handle of a vase, which has often survived when the vase itself, being less durable, has disappeared.
* In astronomy, one of the apparent ends of the rings of Saturn as seen in perspective from the earth: so-called because, in the earlier telescopes, they looked like handles projecting from the planet.
* In chemistry, it is used to describe a bridge between two functional groups/ligands.
* In the plural ansae, in astronomy, compact nebulosities such as can be found in protoplanetary nebulae.