Immortalize an important person in the Arts and Humanities from any nation or cultural group by having a crater on the planet Mercury named in their honor! The MESSENGER Team is seeking help from all Earthlings to suggest names for five impact craters on Mercury. We will accept submissions beginning midnight (00:00 UTC) December 15, 2014 until January 15, 2015 (23:59 UTC). All entries will be reviewed by Team representatives and expert panels. Then, 15 finalist names will be submitted to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) for selection of the 5 winners. Winning submissions will be announced by the IAU to coincide with MESSENGER’s End of Mission Operations in late March/April 2015.
The (IAU; http://www.iau.org/) is the global authority in charge of assigning official names to features on the planets. According to the IAU rules for Mercury ( http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Page/Categories), impact craters are named in honor of people who have made outstanding or fundamental contributions to the Arts and Humanities (visual artists, writers, poets, dancers, architects, musicians, composers and so on). The person must have been recognized as an art-historically significant figure for more than 50 years and must have been dead for at least three years. We are particularly interested in submissions that honor people from nations and cultural groups that are under-represented amongst the currently-named craters. See the current list of named Mercury craters: (
http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/SearchResults?target=MERCURY&featureType=Crater,%20craters).
It is also essential that there are no other features in the Solar System with the same name. For example, Ansel Adams is not eligible because there is a feature on the Moon with the name ‘Adams’ (even though it was not named for Ansel!). Check your idea against the list of named Solar System features (hyperlink to http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/) and enter the name in the Search By Feature Name box in the upper right corner.
For more information and to enter the competition, please visit the MESSENGER web site (http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/) and click the link for 'Name a Crater Competition'.