Erlanger (crater)

Erlanger

Erlanger at local sunrise
Coordinates	86.94°N 28.62°E / 86.94; 28.62
Diameter	10.94 km (6.80 mi)
Depth	2.17 km (1.35 mi)
Eponym	Joseph Erlanger

Erlanger is a very deep lunar impact crater that lies near the north pole of the Moon. Due to its position near the lunar north pole (and given that the Moon's axis is only tilted about 1.5°), sunlight only rarely falls on the bottom, and the 2008 Chandrayaan-1 probe hoped to find that ice from comet impacts had accumulated there. Erlanger is one of the Moon's permanently shadowed craters.

The crater was named by the International Astronomical Union on January 22, 2009, after the American physiologist and 1944 Nobel Prize winner Joseph Erlanger.

References

Sources

• Bussey, B.; Spudis, P. (2004). The Clementine Atlas of the Moon. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-81528-4.
• Moore, Patrick (2001). On the Moon. Sterling Publishing Co. ISBN 978-0-304-35469-6.
• Price, Fred W. (1988). The Moon Observer's Handbook. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-33500-3.
• Rükl, Antonín (1990). Atlas of the Moon. Kalmbach Books. ISBN 978-0-913135-17-4.
• Wlasuk, Peter T. (2000). Observing the Moon. Springer. ISBN 978-1-85233-193-1.

External links

• Announcement of the assignation of the crater name