Crater On Mercury Named After John Lennon

Crater On Mercury Named After John Lennon

The International Astronomical Union has named a crater on Mercury after John Lennon.

The late former-Beatle was given the honour along with nine other individuals, who were noted for their contributions to art and culture.

Above: the new Lennon crater

They join 114 other craters named since Nasa's Messenger Spacecraft first flew past the planet closest to our Sun in 2008. The craters are named not only because it is "fun", but because it makes identifying specific areas much less laborious than just using coordinates.

All of the craters on Mercury are named after "deceased artists, musicians, painters, and authors who have made outstanding or fundamental contributions to their field and have been recognised as art historically significant figures for more than 50 years".

Above: John Lennon, who was shot and killed in New York on 8 December 1980

"The Messenger team is delighted that the IAU has named an additional 10 impact craters on Mercury,” said Messenger Principal Investigator Sean Solomon.

"We are particularly pleased that eight of the 10 individuals honoured 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."

Nasa said that the other craters named in this round were:

  • 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.
  • 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.
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