[meteorite-list] Beatles Legend, Antiwar Author among Those Honored by Newly Named Mercury Craters

[Ron Baalke]

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=249

MESSENGER Mission News
December 19, 2013

Beatles Legend, Antiwar Author among Those Honored by Newly Named Mercury Craters 

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) -- the arbiter of planetary 
and satellite nomenclature since its inception in 1919 -- recently approved 
a proposal from the MESSENGER Science Team to assign names to 10 impact 
craters on Mercury. In keeping with the established naming theme for craters 
on  Mercury, all of the newly designated features are named after "deceased 
artists, musicians, painters, and authors who have made outstanding or 
fundamental contributions to their field and have been recognized as art 
historically significant figures for more than 50 years."

The newly named craters are

	* Barney, for Natalie Clifford Barney (1876-1972), an American-French 
playwright, poet, and novelist.

	* Berlioz, for Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), a French Romantic composer 
best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe 
des morts.

	* Calder, for Alexander Calder (1898-1976), an American sculptor best 
known as the originator of the mobile, a type of kinetic sculpture made 
with delicately balanced or suspended components that move in response 
to motor power or air currents.

	* Capote, for Truman Capote (1924-1984), an American author whose short 
stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction include the novella Breakfast at 
Tiffany's and the true-crime novel In Cold Blood.

	* Caruso, for Enrico Caruso (1873-1921), an Italian tenor who sang to 
great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and the Americas and 
appeared in a wide variety of roles from the Italian and French repertoires 
that ranged from the lyric to the dramatic.

	* Ensor, for James Sidney Ensor (1860-1949), a Belgian painter and printmaker, 
considered an important influence on expressionism and surrealism.

	* Giambologna, for Jean Boulogne Giambologna (1529-1608), a Dutch sculptor 
known for his marble and bronze statuary in a late Renaissance or Mannerist 
style.

	* Lennon, for John Winston Ono Lennon (1940-1980), an English songwriter, 
musician, and singer who rose to worldwide fame as a founding member of 
the Beatles, the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed 
band in the history of popular music.

	* Remarque, for Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970), a German author best 
known for his novel All Quiet on the Western Front, which depicted the 
horrors of war from the viewpoint of young German soldiers.

	* Vieira da Silva, for Maria Elena Vieira da Silva (1908-1992), a Portuguese-born 
French painter of intricate, semiabstract compositions.

These ten newly named craters join 114 other craters named since the MESSENGER 
spacecraft's first Mercury flyby in January 2008. More information about 
the names of features on Mercury and the other objects in the Solar System 
can be found at the U.S. Geological Survey's planetary nomenclature web 
site: http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/ .

"The MESSENGER team is delighted that the IAU has named an additional 
10 impact craters on Mercury," said MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean 
Solomon of Columbia University. "We are particularly pleased that eight 
of the 10 individuals honored made all or many of their artistic contributions 
in the Twentieth Century, the same century in which the MESSENGER mission 
was conceived, proposed, and approved for flight. Imagine."

MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) 
is a NASA-sponsored scientific investigation of the planet Mercury and 
the first space mission designed to orbit the planet closest to the Sun. 
The MESSENGER spacecraft launched on August 3, 2004, and entered orbit 
about Mercury on March 17, 2011 (March 18, 2011 UTC), to begin a yearlong 
study of its target planet. MESSENGER's first extended mission began on 
March 18, 2012, and ended one year later. MESSENGER is now in a second 
extended mission, which is scheduled to conclude in March 2015. Dr. Sean 
C. Solomon, the Director of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth 
Observatory, leads the mission as Principal Investigator. The Johns Hopkins 
University Applied Physics Laboratory built and operates the MESSENGER 
spacecraft and manages this Discovery-class mission for NASA.