Abstract
In the previous chapter we looked at the relationships of the Earth, Sun, and Moon as a system. In this chapter, I will introduce you to the physical Moon and give general information on the types of nearside features that are visible though amateur optical instruments. Several individual types of lunar features will be discussed in greater detail in later chapters.
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Notes
- 1.
William Gilbert (of Colchester) put place names on his naked eye drawing of the Moon (see Figure 3.19), drawn sometime before his death in 1603, but since the map was not published until after the Latin terms for lunar features had been established by others, his work had no influence on the beginnings of selenology.
- 2.
Galileo Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius or the Sidereal Messenger. Translated by Albert van Helden (Chicago Univ. Press, 1989), 43.
- 3.
Johannes Kepler, Dissertatio cum nuncio sidereo nuper as mortales misso à Galilæ Galilæo (Facsimile of the Latin text by Munich Poerchke and Weiner, no date), 16. Kepler used the word maria in several other places in his book. Galileo did not use the word maria in Sidereus Nuncius.
- 4.
Hartsoeker’s nomenclature and accompanying lunar map (figure 3.5) were inserted as a foldout facing page 179 (Article XXXIX) in Essai de dioptrique (Paris, 1694). Hartsoeker used the lunar map that Jean-Dominique Cassini first published in les Memoires de l’Académie Royal de Sciences in 1692. Cassini intended for his map to be used by observers of the July 28, 1692 total lunar eclipse to time when numbered craters would be covered by the Earth’s shadow. He labeled the maria with Latin alphabet A to H. Hartsoeker included Cassini’s numbers and letters.
- 5.
There is some controversy regarding whether or not the Greek-letter designators appended to feature names for elevations and the Roman-numbered designations appended to rilles are still official IAU designations, as adopted by the IAU in 1932 and later. Apparently in the 1960s when updates were made to the lunar nomenclature, compilers of the revised lists did not include these two designators on their lists, but they apparently intended to include them at later dates if funding became available. With their absence from the nomenclature lists, it was assumed by later compilers of the lunar nomenclature database that the IAU had dropped them. They were in fact never officially dropped. Thus, on some lunar nomenclature gazetteer lists, books, and/or charts you will find Greek-letter elevations and Roman-numbered rilles and in other reference materials they are missing. Source for this information is from several personal conversations and correspondence between my friend British-born American selenologist Ewen Adair Whitaker (1922–2016) and the author between 1994 and 2016.
- 6.
Don E. Wilhelms, Summary of Lunar Stratigraphy—Telescopic Observations. Geological Survey Professional Paper 599-F (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Geological Survey, 1970), F2, F3.
- 7.
The three maps and table of the special study were (1) I-351”A Generalized Photogeologic Map of the Moon;” (2) I-351B “Lunar Rays;” (3) I-351C “Physiographic Divisions of the Moon;” and (4) I-351D “Engineer Special Study of the Surface of the Moon.”
- 8.
The elements and their chemical symbols are listed in Table A.16.
- 9.
Richard A. Proctor, Other Worlds than Ours (New York: Hurst & Company, 1870), 187–196.
- 10.
William Henry Pickering, “The Snow Peaks of Theophilus,” Popular Astronomy 25, (3) (March 1917), 149–156.
- 11.
Phuntsok Wanggyal, Liquid Water Does Exist on the Moon (Beijing, China: Foreign Languages Press, English translation, 2002), 430.
- 12.
Robert Hooke, Micrographia (London, 1665), 243.
- 13.
Ibid., 242–246. This book details what Hooke had observed through a microscope, but almost as an afterthought, he added at the very end of the book, a five-page section “Observ. LX Of the Moon,” covering his lunar crater origin theories. Hooke wrote that he included this material, because he had “A pretty large corner of the Plate for the Seven Stars [the Pleiades; M45], void.” Hooke simply wanted to fill the space with something; thereby, he published the first high-resolution drawing of a lunar crater when he included his drawing of the crater Hipparchus, as shown in Figure 3.32.
- 14.
Olbers to Gauss, 25 December 1802, in C. Schilling, ed., Wilhelm Olbers, sein Leben und Werke, 2 vols. (Berlin: Springer, 1894–1909), II:123 as quoted in John G. Burke, Cosmic Debris: Meteorites in History (Berkeley: Univ. California Press 1986), 62.
- 15.
Richard A. Proctor, The Moon, 2nd edn. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1878), 260.
- 16.
Sir John F. W. Herschel, A Treatise on Astronomy (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1833), 229.
- 17.
Alexander von Humboldt, Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe, vol.1 (New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1851), 121.
- 18.
Sir William Herschel, “An account of Three Volcanoes in the Moon, Read April 26, 1787” Philosophical Transactions for 1787 (London: Royal Society of London 77, 1787), 229–231.
- 19.
Henry Kater, “Notice Respecting a Volcanic Appearance in the Moon, in a Letter addressed to the President” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 111 (1821), 130–132.
- 20.
John D. Dana, Manual of Geology (Philadelphia, 1862), 3.
- 21.
Jules Bergeron, “Recherches expérimentales sur le mode de formation des cratères de la Lune” Comp. Ren. 95 (July–December 1882) (Séance du 14 Aout 1882), 324–327.
- 22.
James B. Hannay, “Formation of Lunar Volcanoes” Nature 47 (No. 1201) (November 3, 1892), 7.
- 23.
ibid., 8.
- 24.
Grove Karl Gilbert, “The Face of the Moon; A Study of the Origin of its Features” (Washington, D.C.: Philosophical Society of Washington, 1893), 290, 291.
- 25.
N. S. Shaler, “A Comparison of the Features of the Earth and the Moon” (1903) in Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, (1904), 11–14.
- 26.
Thomas Jefferson Jackson See, Researches on the Evolution of the Stellar System; Vol. II, The Capture Theory of Cosmical Evolution (Lynn, MA: Thos. P. Nichols and Sons, 1910), 331, 338.
- 27.
Charles P. Oliver, Meteors (Baltimore: Williams and Williams, Company, 1925), 252–254.
- 28.
James F. Porter, “The Formation of Lunar Craters,” Popular Astronomy, 34 (1) (No. 331) (January 1926), 69.
- 29.
Forest Ray Moulton, Astronomy (New York: Macmillan Company, 1931), 182.
- 30.
Ralph B. Baldwin, The Face of the Moon (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1949), 50.
- 31.
For a more detailed history of the impact theory of lunar crater formation, read William Graves Hoyt’s book Coon Mountain Controversies: Meteor Crater and the Development of Impact Theory (Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 1987).
- 32.
I suggest that readers interested in the history of the development of the lunar nomenclature and mapping of the Moon in general, refer to Ewen Whitaker’s Mapping and Naming the Moon (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999) for an in-depth discourse on this fascinating aspect of lunar observation.
- 33.
William Gilbert’s original manuscript is housed in the British Library, London.
- 34.
Galileo included only lunation phase drawings in Sidereus Nuncius.
- 35.
On page 109 in the table of lunar nomenclature in the Appendix in his book, Tobiae Mayeri Opera Indedita, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg [a.k.a. Georgius Christophorus Lichtenberg (1742–99)] misspelled Promontorium Tenarium as “Promont. Aenarium” under the list of names used by Hevelius. The misspelling of the ancient Greek name of “Tae’narium” was carried forward and was even adopted by the IAU in 1932. The IAU corrected the spelling in 1961.
- 36.
The names of lunar features that are not currently on the official lunar nomenclature list are enclosed in double quote marks.
- 37.
All of Hugh Percy Wilkins’ “New Names” are listed in Table N.1.
- 38.
I have seen the date of 1935 given incorrectly in place of 1932 in too many lunar books as the year in which the IAU adopted the first official lunar nomenclature list. In the Transactions of the International Astronomical Union, vol. IV (1933) for the General Assembly meeting at Cambridge, MA on September 2 to September 9, 1932 it is reported (pages 237, 238) that: “Commission 17 recommends to the Executive Committee that the list of designations for lunar formations agreed upon by the Commission (item 5 of the President’s report) be printed and that an appropriation not to exceed two hundred pounds be made for the purpose.” In 1935, the IAU General Assembly was informed that: “the list of lunar formations and maps of the Moon prepared under Commission 17 by Miss Blagg and Dr. Müller are in the Press.” [Trans of the IAU vol. V (1936), 11]. Thus, the confusion arises when people see the 1935 publication date for Named Lunar Formations and, without conducting a proper search of the record, conclude that this is the date of the adoption of the list. This incorrect date (1935) is used in the online IAU planetary lunar nomenclature list maintained by the USGS Flagstaff office. When I asked that the listed dates be changed to 1932, I was informed that there was no money to pay for such a major change to the database, so the incorrect 1935 date will be carried forward until it is corrected.
- 39.
The correct spelling of Chemla Lamèch’s name appears to be uncertain. In some publications it is Félix Chemla Lamèch. On his chart (Figure 3.56) the name at the top is printed as Félix Chemla Lamech, but he signed his name at the bottom of the same chart as Felix Chemla Lamèch. Notice the placement of accent marks.
- 40.
In e-mail correspondence with Antonín Rükl (1932–2016), Rükl informed me that, like myself, he was given a copy of the prepublication list and had used it in the 1991 edition of his Atlas of the Moon without verifying the data.
- 41.
I corrected such things as: incorrect life dates, nationalities, professions, eliminated all references to the honorees’ religions, and gave full names for all individuals. We added titles where the information was missing, and data for incorrect or missing selenographic coordinates.
- 42.
The IAU adopted Apollo crew-named features are listed in Table A.11.
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Garfinkle, R.A. (2020). General Selenographical Information. In: Luna Cognita. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1664-1_3
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