Farside Names
Contents
Naming the Farside
Table of Contents
Description
It took roughly 300 years to finalize an internationally-accepted system of names for telescopically observable features on the Moon's nearside, culminating in the [/IAU%20nomenclature IAU nomenclature] of 1935. By contrast, the main outlines of an internationally-accepted system of farside names emerged less than twelve years after receipt of the first vague images of parts of the Moon's hidden hemisphere on October 7, 1959. A system of lettered designations for lesser features was developed by 1982, but not IAU-sanctioned until 2006.
Pre-History
The Moon's [/librations librations] make it possible for observers on Earth to obtain occassional highly foreshortened views of the lunar terrain for about 10° beyond the mean [/limb limb]. Although the mandate for the initial IAU naming effort mentions an intention to include features in the libration zones, the published catalog of [/Named%20Lunar%20Formations Named Lunar Formations] (1935) listed feature centers in a mean-Earth projected X-Y ("[/Xi-Eta Xi-Eta]") coordinate system, which, by definition, is incapable of specifying positions beyond the average limb (at longitude 90°E/W), few such features were included. The exceptions to the rule include [/Mare%20Parvum Mare Parvum] and [/Mare%20Novum Mare Novum] -- both names due to Franz.
This is not to say early observers were unaware of other such features, the best known example being the dark patch in the southwest that Franz named [/Mare%20Orientale Mare Orientale] (with a center at around 92°W -- and not listed in NLF). Other examples include named south polar peaks, some of which were believed to reside beyond the mean limb, although precise positions were not provided in [/Named%20Lunar%20Formations Named Lunar Formations].
After the issuance of [/Named%20Lunar%20Formations Named Lunar Formations], the search for possible farside features visible from Earth continued. As an example, [/Wilkins%20and%20Moore Wilkins and Moore]'s book proposes names for a number of craters they believed to have detected with centers beyond 90° longitude, and traces bright ray patterns observable on the nearside to locate the possible centers of several unnamed others too distant to be observed. For the most part, Wilkins and Moore's libration zone features are difficult or impossible to identify on modern maps, and their proposed names have been ignored.
The IAU effectively imposed a moratorium on efforts to add new names in [/IAU%20Transactions%20IX 1955].
Luna 3 and the 1961 IAU Names
The first, rather vague images of a portion of the Moon's farside returned by Luna 3 in October 1959 led to an immediate wish to name at least some of the features visible on those photos. Eighteen of the names proposed in the [/Atlas%20of%20the%20Other%20Side%20of%20the%20Moon Atlas of the Other Side of the Moon] (prepared by the three major Russian lunar research centers) were [/IAU%20Transactions%20XIB approved by the IAU] in 1961.
The following graphics (click to see full-sized) illustrate the positions of the Luna 3 features on modern maps of the Moon:
The coordinates of most of these features were "checked" (possibly reassigning them to features different from the ones originally intended) in [/Menzel%2C%201971 Menzel, 1971]. At least one, [/Montes%20Sovietici Montes Sovietici] was deleted.
More Baby Steps
As part of their [/IAU%20Transactions%20XIIB IAU-sanctioned] efforts to revise and update the [/Named%20Lunar%20Formations Named Lunar Formations] catalog, workers at the University of Arizona's [/LPL LPL] issued a [/Rectified%20Lunar%20Atlas Rectified Lunar Atlas] in 1963. It was based on interpretation of Earth-based photos viewed from "over the limb" by projection onto a globe. Of the 68 names attributed to the Rectified Lunar Atlas in [/Researching%20Nomenclature%20Histories Appendix T] of [/Whitaker Whitaker]'s book, nine are current IAU names for features with centers beyond the mean limb: [/Bel%27kovich Bel'kovich], [/Cremona Cremona], [/Fermi Fermi], [/Hale Hale], [/Jeans Jeans], [/Moseley Moseley], [/Planck Planck], [/R%C3%B6ntgen Röntgen] and [/Stefan Stefan]; although the current [/Fermi Fermi], [/Planck Planck] and [/Stefan Stefan] are not the same as the vague "features" named in the 1963 atlas -- and several of the features thought, in 1963, to have centers beyond the mean limb are no longer cataloged that way. In addition to the preceding, the name Joliot-Curie from Luna 3 (now known as [/Joliot Joliot]) was "clarified" as being a replacement name for the IAU's former [/Mare%20Novum Mare Novum].
Competition for Further Names
The uncertainty of many of the initial farside name assignments, and international rivalry, lead to a rather intense competition for farside names, evidenced, for example, at the [/IAU%20Transactions%20XIIIB 1967 IAU meeting], where U.S. and Soviet maps were presented.
The Soviets seem to have been the most aggressive, presenting maps (in the fashion of America's [/Rectified%20Lunar%20Atlas Rectified Lunar Atlas]) with their proposed nomenclature already in place. NASA tended to present maps with the features numbered, awaiting names to be assigned by international agreement.
The difficulty of assigning names prematurely, based on the earliest imagery, is illustrated in the following thumbnails (click to see full-sized) :
- Detail from Section 1 of the Sternberg Institute's 1967 Complete Moon Map with cyrillic names transcribed to western script.
Official names: Menzel, 1971
Whitaker's Lettered Craters
[/NASA%20RP-1097 NASA RP-1097]
Additional Information
LPOD Articles
Bibliography
- Far side of the Moon (Wikipedia)
- Breido, I. I.; Shchegolev, D. E. 1962. Schematic Chart of the Far Side of the Moon. In: The Moon, (Kopal, Z., and Mikhailov, Z. K., editors) IAU Symposium 14, Academic Press, pp. 25-38.
This page has been edited 1 times. The last modification was made by - tychocrater tychocrater on Jun 13, 2009 3:24 pm - mgx2
