Talk:Copernicus (lunar crater)

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Why Copernicus crater rather than Copernicus (crater) as the article title? Do people really say "Copernicus crater"? If so, I would think both words would be capitalized. If not, the word crater is there only to distinguish this from the astronomer Copernicus and whatever other Copernici besides the crater and the astronomer may exist, in which case parentheses should be used. Michael Hardy 22:43, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I've seen it called "Copernicus crater" in many locations, and I believe that it's similar to how things are named "Mississippi river" or "Mount Everest"; in casual conversation it's fine to call them "Mississippi" or "Everest", but people tend to include the feature type in the name when they're being formal. I don't know if there's a style guide about such things. The one thing I haven't been able to figure out from just looking around, though, is whether the "crater" should be capitalized; some Wikipedia articles on craters did that and others didn't. Bryan 00:06, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Degrees

I think it might be useful to add how wide this is in degrees or arcseconds as viewed from Earth, if anyone knows.

The Moon is only about a half degree (29') across the sky. It has a diameter of 3,476 km while Copernicus is 93 km. So about 46". But it varies slightly depending on the Moon's point in it's orbit. I'm not sure how this is useful to anybody... :) — RJH 19:29, 6 October 2005 (UTC)