Neison, 1876
Contents
Neison: The Moon (1876)
(glossary entry)
Description
The maps and feature lists in The Moon, and the Condition and Configurations of Its Surface, published in 1876 by Edmund Neville Nevill (writing under the pseudonym of Edmund Neison), is one of the three main sources (the other two being Beer and Mädler and Schmidt) used to produce Mary Blagg's Collated List of 1913, from which evolved the modern IAU lunar nomenclature. Neison's book appears to have been the most influential of the three. The crater Neison is named in honor of Nevill.
Additional Information
- Four complete digitial scans of the 1876 edition of Neison is available for free download from Google Books.
- The sectional maps from Neison's book are also available in an on-line edition on Chuck Wood's Moon, and in a newer and more complete edition on the present Wiki.
- Although Neison's maps and his notations on them are often extremely difficult to interpret, Blagg and Müller appear to have relied heavily on them (and on the accompanying text) in assigning names in Named Lunar Formations.
- In the introductory material to his descriptive section, Neison says his maps contain a total of 513 names. Neison says he took 427 of those from Beer and Mädler, respecting, as much as possible, their system of names and symbols. Beer and Mädler themselves attributed 6 of these 427 names to Hevelius, 206 to Riccioli, 1 to Hell, 60 to Schröter, 8 to Lohrmann, 1 to Gruithuisen and 145 of Mädler's own invention. To these, Neison added 67 from the catalog of the British Association: 1 from Webb, 1 from LeCouturier, 1 from Schmidt, 4 from Lee, 58 from Birt and 2 from Schröter that Beer and Mädler had been unable to identify. To these, Neison himself added 2 from Riccioli, 3 from Schröter and 14 of his own.
- Neison also says the geometric positioning of the features on his maps is based entirely on Beer and Mädler, without alteration, even though he suspected their measurements were in need of revision.
- Differences between the nomenclature appearing in this book and that in other systems in use at the time are detailed in Neison (1880).
- Neison later wrote a popular treatise on Astronomy including a chapter about the Moon.
- Lunar names from Neison
LPOD Articles
Bibliography
- Neison, Edmund. 1876. The moon and the condition and configurations of its surface. London: Longmans, Green, and Co.
- Spencer-Jones, H. 1941. Obituary Notices: Fellows:- Nevill, Edmund Neville. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 101, pp. 137-139.
