Erlanger is a very deep lunar impact crater that lies near the north pole of the Moon. Due to its position near the lunar north pole (and given that the Moon's axis is only tilted about 1.5°),[1] sunlight only rarely falls on the bottom, and the 2008 Chandrayaan-1 probe hoped to find that ice from comet impacts had accumulated there.[2] Erlanger is one of the Moon's permanently shadowed craters.[3]
 Erlanger at local sunrise | |
| Coordinates | 86°56′N 28°37′E / 86.94°N 28.62°E |
|---|---|
| Diameter | 9.9 km |
| Eponym | Joseph Erlanger |
The crater was named by the International Astronometrical Union on January 22, 2009, after the American physiologist and 1944 Nobel Prize winner Joseph Erlanger.[4]
References
edit- ^ Article about Erlanger at OuterSpaceUniverse.org
- ^ Article about Erlanger Archived 2009-08-30 at the Wayback Machine by Phil Plait
- ^ "Eternal Darkness Near the North Pole | Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera".
- ^ "Erlanger (crater)". Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. USGS Astrogeology Research Program.
- Andersson, L. E.; Whitaker, E. A. (1982). NASA Catalogue of Lunar Nomenclature. NASA RP-1097.
- Bussey, B.; Spudis, P. (2004). The Clementine Atlas of the Moon. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-81528-4.
- Cocks, Elijah E.; Cocks, Josiah C. (1995). Who's Who on the Moon: A Biographical Dictionary of Lunar Nomenclature. Tudor Publishers. ISBN 978-0-936389-27-1.
- McDowell, Jonathan (July 15, 2007). "Lunar Nomenclature". Jonathan's Space Report. Retrieved 2007-10-24.
- Menzel, D. H.; Minnaert, M.; Levin, B.; Dollfus, A.; Bell, B. (1971). "Report on Lunar Nomenclature by the Working Group of Commission 17 of the IAU". Space Science Reviews. 12 (2): 136–186. Bibcode:1971SSRv...12..136M. doi:10.1007/BF00171763. S2CID 122125855.
- Moore, Patrick (2001). On the Moon. Sterling Publishing Co. ISBN 978-0-304-35469-6.
- Price, Fred W. (1988). The Moon Observer's Handbook. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-33500-3.
- Rükl, Antonín (1990). Atlas of the Moon. Kalmbach Books. ISBN 978-0-913135-17-4.
- Webb, Rev. T. W. (1962). Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes (6th revised ed.). Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-20917-3.
- Whitaker, Ewen A. (1999). Mapping and Naming the Moon. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-62248-6.
- Wlasuk, Peter T. (2000). Observing the Moon. Springer. ISBN 978-1-85233-193-1.