Nancy is Now on Venus

By Nancy Atkinson - June 17, 2010 at 2:34 PM UTC | Planetary Science
Nancy-on-Venus.jpg

This was posted on

USGS Astrogeology Science Center website

yesterday:

"The name Nancy has been approved for a crater on Venus located at 6.4N, 272.2E."

I checked with Jennifer Blue, who posts the latest

nomenclature planetary news on the USGS site,

wondering if the crater was named for anyone in particular or just 'Nancys' in general. She told me that small craters (less than 20 km in diameter) on Venus are named with common female first names, while larger craters (over 20 km) are named for deceased women who have made outstanding or fundamental contributions to their field.

This crater is pretty small, and I'm not dead yet, fortunately, so it is not named for me.

"The crater named Nancy is not named for anyone in particular," Jennifer wrote me. "But you could pretend that it was named for you!"

I think that's what I'll do.

UPDATE (8/08/12):

I just got a note from Lizzy Tandberg Hall, who said that she named this crater after her mother, Nancy Clay Tandberg while mapping the Devana Chasma Quadrangle.

Here's a link to a very interesting page, USGS's

"Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature"

which gives the parameters for naming features on the planetary bodies in our solar system.

Nancy Crater. Kinda like the sound of that.

Wait.

That was the name of the

character in Star Trek that sucked all the salt out of people.

And wasn't

the planet

where Nancy Crater was stationed really hot and arid?

Coincidence???

Here's a pdf of a larger map of the area in Venus where Nancy Crater is located.

Thanks to

Emily Lakdawalla

for bringing Nancy Crater to my attention!

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com