Jesuit names on the Moon craters:
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Amundsen is a large lunar impact crater located near the south pole of the Moon, named after the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. It lies along the southern lunar limb, and so is viewed from the side by an observer on the Earth. To the northwest is the crater Scott, a formation of similar dimensions that is named for another Antarctic explorer. Nobile is attached to the western rim.
Copernicus is a lunar impact crater located in eastern Oceanus Procellarum. It was named after the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. It typifies craters that formed during the Copernican period in that it has a prominent ray system. It may have been created by debris from the breakup of the parent body of asteroid 495 Eulalia 800 million years ago.
Wilhelm Wolff Beer was a banker and astronomer from Berlin, Prussia, and the brother of Giacomo Meyerbeer.
Aristarchus is a lunar impact crater that lies in the northwest part of the Moon's near side. It is considered the brightest of the large formations on the lunar surface, with an albedo nearly double that of most lunar features. The feature is bright enough to be visible to the naked eye, and displays unusually bright features when viewed through a large telescope. It is also readily identified when most of the lunar surface is illuminated by earthshine. The crater is deeper than the Grand Canyon.
A ray system comprises radial streaks of fine ejecta thrown out during the formation of an impact crater, looking somewhat like many thin spokes coming from the hub of a wheel. The rays may extend for lengths up to several times the diameter of their originating crater, and are often accompanied by small secondary craters formed by larger chunks of ejecta. Ray systems have been identified on the Moon, Earth, Mercury, and some moons of the outer planets. Originally it was thought that they existed only on planets or moons lacking an atmosphere, but more recently they have been identified on Mars in infrared images taken from orbit by 2001 Mars Odyssey's thermal imager.
Bailly is a lunar impact crater that is located near the south-west limb of the Moon. It was named after French astronomer Jean S. Bailly. The oblique viewing angle gives the crater a foreshortened appearance, and the location near the limb can limit visibility due to libration. The most favorable time for viewing this feature is near the full moon when the terminator is crossing the crater wall.
Clavius is one of the largest crater formations on the Moon and the second largest crater on the visible near side. It is located in the rugged southern highlands of the Moon, to the south of the prominent ray crater Tycho. It is named for the Jesuit priest Christopher Clavius.
The far side of the Moon is the lunar hemisphere that always faces away from Earth, opposite to the near side, because of synchronous rotation in the moon's orbit. Compared to the near side, the far side's terrain is rugged, with a multitude of impact craters and relatively few flat and dark lunar maria ("seas"), giving it an appearance closer to other barren places in the solar system such as Mercury and Callisto. It has one of the largest craters in the Solar System, the South Pole–Aitken basin. The hemisphere is sometimes called the "dark side of the Moon", where "dark" means "unknown" instead of "lacking sunlight" – both sides of the Moon experience two weeks of sunlight while the opposite side experiences two weeks of night.
Blancanus is a lunar impact crater located in the rugged southern region of the Moon, to the southwest of the walled plain Clavius. To the northwest lies the comparably sized crater Scheiner, and south-southwest of Blancanus is the worn Klaproth.
Baillaud is a lunar impact crater that is located near the north limb of the Moon. The rim of the crater has been eroded and worn by a long history of impacts, leaving a hilly ridge surrounding the interior. The crater Euctemon is intruding into the rim to the northeast, and the rim bulges outward to the northwest. At the south end of the crater is a gap connecting to the lava-flooded surface to the south.
Lunar craters are impact craters on Earth's Moon. The Moon's surface has many craters, all of which were formed by impacts. The International Astronomical Union currently recognizes 9,137 craters, of which 1,675 have been dated.
Adam Tanner was an Austrian Jesuit theologian.
Gerolamo Sersale was an Italian Jesuit astronomer and selenographer. His surname is from a noble Neapolitan family that originated in Sorrento. The town Sersale, a commune in the southern Italian province of Catanzaro, was founded in 1620. A Jesuit priest, Sersale drew a fairly precise map of a full moon observed on 13 July 1650. The map was engraved in 1651 and was studied by other astronomers, like Grimaldi and praised and mentioned in Riccioli's Almagestum novum and Astronomia reformata. However, today it can be seen in the Naval Observatory of San Fernando in Cadiz, Spain. With his telescope, the Jesuit Father Daniele Bartoli was able to see two spots on Mars in Naples in 1644.
Johann (John) Georg Hagen was an Austrian Jesuit priest and astronomer. After serving as Director of the Georgetown University Observatory he was called to Rome by Pope Pius X in 1906 to be the first Jesuit director of the new Vatican Observatory. Father Hagen was also the spiritual director of Maria Elizabeth Hesselblad (1870-1957), who was baptized by him on August 15, 1902 and eventually was canonized on June 5, 2016 by Pope Francis.
Schiaparelli is an impact crater on Mars, located near the planet's equator at latitude 3° south and longitude 344° in the Sinus Sabaeus quadrangle. It measures approximately 459 kilometers in diameter and was named after Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, known for his observations of the Red Planet and his mistranslated term "canali". The name was adopted by IAU's Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature in 1973.
The topography of the Moon is the mapping of the Moon's surface and the study of its shape. It has been measured by the methods of laser altimetry and stereo image analysis, including data obtained during several missions. The most visible topographical feature is the giant far side South Pole-Aitken basin, which possesses the lowest elevations of the Moon. The highest elevations are found just to the northeast of this basin, and it has been suggested that this area might represent thick ejecta deposits that were emplaced during an oblique South Pole-Aitken basin impact event. Other large impact basins, such as the maria Imbrium, Serenitatis, Crisium, Smythii, and Orientale, also possess regionally low elevations and elevated rims.
Peter H. Schultz is Professor of Geological Sciences at Brown University specializing in the study of planetary geology, impact cratering on the Earth and other objects in the Solar System, and volcanic modifications of planetary surfaces. He was co-investigator to the NASA Science Mission Directorate spacecraft Deep Impact and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). He was awarded the Barringer Medal of the Meteoritical Society in 2004 for his theoretical and experimental studies of impact craters.
A permanently shadowed crater is a depression on a body in the Solar System within which lies a point that is always in darkness.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Moon: