Talk:List of craters on the Moon

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Contents

[edit] Crater names

Crater names in the initial version of this page came from the USGS Astrogeology Research Program page. I've replaced the diacricital marks with HTML escapes where possible, and Unicode characters elsewhere.

Some of the names are enclosed in square brackets, and I don't know why. It may be significant.

-- Ortonmc 03:23, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Location

Any chance of the location for each crater being added? Plus is it safe to assume all of these are on the visible side of the Moon? Should they be annotated to show which are or not? --Phil | Talk 09:10, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure. Would having the location listed on this page be of any value? It is already being listed on the completed crater description pages. I just added the diameters so that visitors could judge which craters are likely to be more prominent. (I thought about adding a page of just the largest craters.)
This appears to be a complete list of all officially IAU-sanctioned lunar craters, including those on the far side. Is there a reason why the list would need to make that distinction? Just wondering. — RJH 16:24, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Mystery eponyms

Okay, here are the remaining eponyms that have not yet been linked. In most cases this is for the simple reason that there was no information available, and so the names behind the initials remain a mystery. Many are Soviet scientists and engineers who labored in obscurity behind the iron curtain. The remainder should have some data available somewhere, but I haven't had much success on the internet. Anyway, if you have any better luck tracking the biographies on the names, or even just their full names, it would be appreciated!!!! — RJH 19:54, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Nikolaj N. Artamonov, Soviet rocket scientist (1906-1965)
  • Nikolaj G. Chernyshev, Soviet rocketry engineer (1906-1963)
  • John C. Cooper, American humanitarian (1887-1967)
  • Vasilij P. Engel'gardt (Engelhardt), Soviet astronomer (1828-1915)
  • Nikolaj N. Evdokimov, Soviet astronomer (1868-1940)
  • A. P. Fedorov (1872-1920)
  • Georgij F. Firsov, Soviet rocketry engineer (1917-1960)
  • Aleksandr I. Gavrilov, Soviet rocket engineer (1884-1955)
  • Igor B. Gavrilov, Soviet astronomer (1928-1982)
  • Andrej D. Grachev, Soviet rocketry scientist (1900-1964)
  • N. Ja. Il'in, Soviet rocketry scientist (1901-1937)
  • William M. Kearons, American astronomer (1878-1948)
  • C. A. Kinau, German botanist, selenographer (flourished 1850)
  • Daniel O. Klute, American rocketry scientist (1921-1964)
  • B.T. Konoplev, Soviet radio engineer (1912-1960)
  • Sergey K. Kostinskiy, Soviet astronomer (1867-1937)
  • Aleksander V. Krasnov, Russian astronomer (1866-1907)
  • Feodosiy N. Krasovskiy, Soviet geodesist (1878-1948)
  • Aleksandr I. Lebedinskiy, Soviet astrophysicist (1913-1967)
  • Yuriy N. Lipskiy, Soviet selenographer (1909-1978)
  • Aleksandr L. Malyy, Soviet rocketry scientist (1907-1961)
  • Yurij B. Mezentsev, Soviet rocket scientist (1929-1965)
  • Evgenij J. Perepelkin, Soviet astrophysicist (1906-1940)
  • Boris S. Petropavlovskiy, Soviet rocketry engineer (1898-1933) — worked at the Soviet Gas Dynamics Laboratory
  • Evgenij S. Petrov, Soviet rocketry scientist (1900-1942)
  • C. Popov, Bulgarian astronomer (1880-1966) —Most likely Kiril Popov
  • Nikolaj I. Tikhomirov, Soviet chemical engineer (1860-1930) — established the Soviet Gas Dynamics Laboratory
  • A. A. Yakovkin, Soviet astronomer (1887-1974) —Avenir A. Yakovkin? 21 May 1887 - 18 Nov 1974


Of the above list, some very brief info on the rocketry scientists may be found (in Russian) at [1], with photos at [2]. Malyy, Petrov, Chernyshev, Artamonov, Gavrilov, Firsov, Grachev, Mezentsev all worked at the GDL-OKB (Gas Dynamics Laboratory-Experimental Design Bureau, Газодинамическая лаборатория (ГДЛ) Опытно-конструкторское бюро (ОКБ)), along with Zhiritskiy and Alekhin.

Some very brief descriptions:

  • Б. С. Петропавловский (1898—1933), начальник ГДЛ, конструктор пороховых ракет (Boris Sergeevich Petropavlovskiy, head of GDL, constructor of powder rockets [3]
  • А. Л. Малый (1907 — 1961), техник-экспериментатор (Malyy, technician-experimenter)
  • Е. С. Петров (1900 — 1942), техник-конструктор (Petrov, technician-constructor)
  • Н. Г. Чернышев (1906 — 1953), инженер-химик (Chernyshev, engineer-chemist)
  • Н. Н. Артамонов (1906—1965), начальник опытного производства (Artamonov, head of experimental production)
  • А. И. Гаврилов (1884 — 1955), начальник конструкторской бригады (Gavrilov, head of construction brigade)
  • Н. П. Алехин (1913 — 1964), инженер-конструктор (Alekhin, engineer-constructor)
  • Г. С. Жирицкий (1893 — 1966), заместитель главного конструктора (Georgii Sergeevich Zhiritskiy, deputy chief constructor) [4]
  • Г. Фирсов, заместитель главного конструктора по двигателям (Firsov, deputy chief engine constructor)
  • Н. И. Тихомиров (1870 — 1930), основатель и руководитель Газодинамической лаборатории (Nikolai Ivanovich Tikhomirov, founder and leader of the GDL) [5]
  • Н. Я. Ильин (1901 — 1937), уполномоченный начальника вооружений РККА, начальник ГДЛ (Николай Яковлевич Ильин, Nikolai Yakovlevich Il'in or Ilyin, commissar of Red Army armaments (?exact translation?), head of GDL). [6] [7]. Google search is complicated by WWII sniper with exact same name and patronymic, who died in 1944.


Some of these folks were fairly obscure, and thanks to the Soviet-era mania for giving names as initials, I really wonder if we'll ever know their full names, or anything beyond the barest biographical detail. Zhiritskiy and Petropavlovskiy and Tikhomirov have entries in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, and Ilyin has detailed info as well, which gives us a little more info, but for the others we might just want to group them into a collective article (title?) and link to that. For some of them, their main qualification seems to have been that they worked at the GDL and were already deceased in 1966 when the crater names were given. -- Curps 06:42, 2 November 2005 (UTC)


One should add the crater Hanno. The designation as a roman explorer in the USGS Gazetteer is wrong. Hanno was an explorer, but from Carthago: Hanno_the_Navigator.

I gave a message to the USGS. Your "Still another user".
The entry has been corrected by USGS; July 6, 2005

These names are resolved, I hope:

  • G. M. Kramarov, Soviet space scientist (1887-1970) -> Grigory Moiseevich Kramarov
  • Nikolaj A. Morozov, Soviet natural scientist (1854-1945) -> Nikolaj Aleksandrovich Morozov
  • Vladimir V. Razumov, Soviet rocket builder (1890-1967) -> Vladimir Vasil'evich Razumov

[edit] Solved

These have been solved:


Hey, I have similar problems with the Mars list of craters. Soviet/Russian names are hard to track. However, I found this one:
Happy hunting! Awolf002 23:40, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and Heinrich Friedrich Emil Lents is Heinrich Friedrich Emil Lenz, I believe. Awolf002 23:45, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! — RJH 15:26, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Engel’gardt, Vasilii Pavlovich (aka Engelhardt) (1828–1915) : see http://www.lunarrepublic.com/gazetteer/crater_e.shtml

[edit] Reference

I've found this reference to be of some use in finding information on the eponyms:

— RJH (talk) 23:30, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kinau

I found a summary [13] (in German) of a talk about the search for the eponym of the Kinau crater. In this talk it was argued that this name was not given for the botanist C.A. Kinau, but the pastor and amateur astronomer Gottfried Adolf Kinau. The discussion shows that the IAU itself seems to be unclear on the history of this name. The presenter argues that there were no publications on any observations by the botantist, but some of the pastor drawings that were published. Tricky!! Awolf002 21:09, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Interesting. Supposedly you can write to the head of the IAU Lunar nomenclature division and ask about such matters. But I didn't have much luck when I tried. Thanks. — RJH 22:51, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I was given an email contact to a person at the USGS that works with that committee. I will try it, there. Awolf002 11:09, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Good luck then. I never got a resonse from that address. :-/ RJH 15:08, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It turns out, this question was "under review" by various people. I received as answer to my inquiry, which states that the history is complicated. So, we should (a) stick with the current IAU identification or (b) have both persons as eponyms with some explanation. I think (b) might work best. Comments? Awolf002 18:41, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Definitely (b). Urhixidur 21:11, 2005 Jun 22 (UTC)

More info from people working actively on resolving this, and it states that the C.A. Kinau is incorrect and should be removed. I think a note to that effect is needed. I will try my hand with this. Awolf002 23:34, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It also turns out that it is "Adolf Gottfried Kinau"... Awolf002 12:39, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I wrote a article about Gottfried Adolf Kinau for our journal "Sterne und Weltraum" and I think he will publish in the next issue. Gottfried Adolf Kinau lived and worked about 30 years in Suhl. Because I work in this town I had the possibility to find many documents and letters from him.

Thanks for the info, Anon user. Could you clarify the order of the first names? Awolf002 1 July 2005 15:04 (UTC)

Still another user: Dear anonymous Awolf002! If you would have tried to contact the persons indicated by the USGS directly and openly with your name, you might have obtained the information much easier. In 19th century Germany, the spelling and the sequence of christian names was not yet so fixed as nowadays. Kinau was baptised Adolph Gottfried Kinau. The most common spelling of Adolph changed during the century to Adolf. One can find Adolph Gottfried and Gottfried Adolf in the documents.

I have contacted some very helpful persons at the USGS with my name, address, phone number and email address. And I tried to summarize the information I have received in this page. I do not think I could have been more open. In fact, I just was asked to remove some info, since I was too open with it. Awolf002 1 July 2005 18:04 (UTC)

The "Still another user" was a little astonished when he discovered his name on this page without being contacted before, especially when he saw that Awolf002 does not reveal her/his identity herself/himself (as other user on this page do). But this has been corrected now. Hopefully, the quite difficult search for the identity of the namesake of crater Kinau will be published in detail in journals soon.

One article (in German) has appeared in Sterne und Weltraum (2005/10) p. 84: Olaf Kretzer: "Gottfried Adolf Kinau: Ein Pfarrer aus Suhl, verewigt auf dem Mond?" Another article (in English) has been submitted to JBAA.

In April 2007, the article mentioned before has appeared in the JBAA, and the entry in the (official) list of the USGS has been changed: R.A. Garfinkle and B. Pfeiffer: Discovery of the real person behind the name of the lunar crater Kinau, Journal of the British Astronomical Association 117 (2007) 81 - 84 Siffler 13:14, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Draft lunar crater pages complete

Okay I think it's finally reached a stage where all of the lunar crater pages are set up and have consistent format and cross-linking. Phew!!!

So there's not a whole lot more material I can add. Maybe some quality images scattered around the net and the occasional info tidbit. Hopefully some day there will be a whole lot more material to add (once we start sending more missions there). Probably also some entropy will start to set in; I had already started to find a few odd-ball changes here and there. :) — RJH 01:38, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Good work! One further thing that could be done, if you're up for it, is to edit all the biography articles to add links to the eponymous craters. In many of them it just says a crater was named after him rather than linking to the specific crater. -- Curps 01:57, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. A lot of those bio-pages are linked to the crater already, and I try add them as they come up. But first I was going to help finish up the remaining eponym links where possible. BTW, the NASA historical division proved helpful trying to track down information on a former lead scientist NASA (Paul Werner Gast). So thanks to them as well. :) — RJH 22:40, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New crater templates

All of the lunar crater pages now have either the {{lunar crater data}} or the {{lunar crater data image}} template, rather than the old "lunar crater" template. The last has been put up for delete via TfD. The new templates are more compact and now include a link to the mapping page. I hope you like them! — RJH 22:49, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

{{lunar crater data image}} has been merged into {{lunar crater data}} so only the later template is now needed. — RJH (talk) 22:56, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wow

I just stumbled on this set of pages and am completely amazed. At first I was expecting to see the list pages dominated by red links and the few crater articles that do exist to be of poor quality on average. But that is not the case. In fact most crater articles I saw were decent stubs that looked nice, read well, and were referenced. Kudos!

Some questions though: Where do we stop? I heard once that there are trillions of craters on the moon. Limiting what we have to named craters larger than 1 km in diameter seems to be prudent to me (many of the others can be mentioned in lists but need not have their own articles, IMO). What do others think? Is there a standard for inclusion that I missed? --mav 20:46, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you! I know there's been a lot of really awesome work on the eponym pages as well. The craters included in this list are the ones that have been officially assigned a name by the IAU. Currently that's only about 2400, so it's a manageable list. The various satellite craters have been rolled up into the named craters, as have certain tiny craters that are grouped together (such as the named craters in the Catena Davy.) If we ever get lunar colonies though, it could be that place names there become as frequent as they are here on the Earth. — RJH 21:20, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
It's also kind of cool to look at the ESA's SMART-1 site and see them using some of our descriptions of the lunar craters for their photos. I hope they know those were just written up by lay people. ;-) — RJH (talk) 20:18, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Crater list update

I can no longer find the Krishna crater on the USGS lunar crater reference page. Also missing is Christel, and Sung-Mei is now bracketed (meaning it's not an official name). But Manuel and Yoshi are still good. As Manuel is larger of the two, Krishna should probably be renamed to Manuel (crater) and the page modified appropriately.

It may also be that there are some other revisions to the list, and the Wikipedia "List of craters on the Moon" is in need of a verification. — RJH (talk) 17:33, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I recently found out that this feature is actually named Aratus CA, so it has been merged with the Aratus (crater) page. — RJH (talk) 15:16, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] IAU-approved craters

Here are some new crater designations that have been officially approved by the IAU in 2006:

  • Chawla
  • D. Brown
  • Husband
  • L. Clark
  • M. Anderson
  • McCool
  • Ramon
  • Ryder

Hopefully this is complete. I added links to the appropriate list pages and I hope to get to the actual pages soon. — RJH (talk) 22:34, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Since multitudes of the lunar crater pages got slapped with a stub tag, I've lost my motivation to create separate pages for these. Instead they are currently mentioned on the Apollo (crater) page. — RJH (talk) 21:15, 7 May 2007 (UTC)