New Name for a Chasma on Venus

20 July 2012

The southern segment of Devana Chasma on Venus has been renamed Rona Chasma. For more information, see the maps of V-29 and V-41 in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature.

New Names for a Crater and a Colles on Mars

20 July 2012

The IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature has approved the names Lederberg for the Martian crater located at 13N, 314E and Ulysses Colles for the colles at 6.1N, 236.9E. For more information, see the maps of MC-9 (for Ulysses Colles) and MC-10 (for Lederberg) in… Read More

New Names Approved for Twelve Small Lunar Craters

15 June 2012

The Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature has approved 12 new names for small craters on the Moon: Albert, Borya, Gena, Igor, Kolya, Kostya, Leonid, Nikolya, Slava, Valera, Vasya, and Vitya. For details, see the map of LAC 24 and the Lunokhod-1 traverse map in the Gazetteer of… Read More

Martian Crater Named Moanda

5 July 2012

The IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature has approved the name Moanda for the Martian crater located at 35.93S, 320.0E. For more information, see the map of MC-26 in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature.

Martian Crater Coordinates now in MDIM 2.1

17 November 2010

In October 2010, the coordinates of the named craters in the Martian portion of the nomenclature database were updated from values from the Mars Digital Image Mosaic (MDIM) 2.0 control network to values in the MDIM 2.1 control network. The purpose of this work is to facilitate the identification of… Read More

Coordinates of Named Lunar Features Now Available in LOLA Reference Frame

4 June 2012

In 2012, coordinates of the named features in the lunar portion of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN) Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature were updated. Previous coordinates were based on maps using the Unified Lunar Control Network… Read More

First Names Approved for Asteroid (2867) Steins

11 May 2012

The Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature has approved names for 23 craters and one regio on asteroid (2867) Steins. For details, see the list of Steins feature names and the image of Steins in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature.

Three New Names Approved for Earth's Moon

17 April 2009

Three new names have been approved in the polar areas of the Moon; the names Hinshelwood and Whipple for the north pole region, and the name Braude for the south pole region. For more information, see the list of Moon crater names in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature.

Nine New Ring Gap Names Approved for Saturn's Ring System

9 February 2009

The following names have been approved for gaps in Saturn's ring system: Bond Gap, Dawes Gap, Herschel Gap, Russell Gap, Jeffreys Gap, Kuiper Gap, Laplace Gap, Bessel Gap, and Barnard Gap. See the "Ring and Ring Gap Nomenclature" page in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature for more information.

Nineteen New Names Approved for Earth's Moon

22 January 2009

The names Aepinus, Bosch, Erlanger, Fibiger, Florey, Gore, Grignard, Haber, Hevesy, Haskin, Houssay, Ibn Bajja, Kocher, Kuhn, Laveran, Nefed'ev, Svedberg, von Baeyer, and Wapowski have been approved for craters in the north and south polar regions of the Moon. For more information, see the list of… Read More