{"id":5265,"date":"2017-03-21T14:25:51","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T13:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=5265"},"modified":"2017-03-21T14:25:51","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T13:25:51","slug":"ou-phd-student-names-a-crater-on-mercury-after-irish-poet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/science-mct\/space\/ou-phd-student-names-a-crater-on-mercury-after-irish-poet\/","title":{"rendered":"OU PhD student names a crater on Mercury after Irish poet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OU PhD student, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/people\/jw28634\">Jack Wright <\/a>has been given the honour of naming a 120km diameter crater on Mercury which he identified through his mapping of a section of the planet.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5271\" style=\"width: 262px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5271\" id=\"longdesc-return-5271\" class=\" wp-image-5271\" tabindex=\"-1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Heaney-300x273.png\" alt=\"'Heaney' 120km diameter crater on Mercury \" width=\"252\" height=\"229\" longdesc=\"https:\/\/ounews.co?longdesc=5271&amp;referrer=5265\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Heaney-300x273.png 300w, https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Heaney.png 547w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 252px) 100vw, 252px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5271\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8216;Heaney&#8217; 120km diameter crater on Mercury<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Named \u2018Heaney\u2019 after the late Irish poet, author and Nobel Prize winner for literature,<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Seamus_Heaney\"> Seamus Heaney<\/a>, the official announcement was made today (21 March) by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iau.org\/\">International Astronomical Union <\/a>at the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, USA.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The naming follows the International Astronomical Union-approved custom of naming craters on Mercury after deceased artists, authors and poets. Speaking about his inspiration Jack explained,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cSeamus Heaney immediately came to mind, not only because he was a Nobel Laureate and one of Northern Ireland&#8217;s most famous sons, but also because I remember reading Death of a Naturalist (1966), his first published collection of poems, for my GCSE English Literature course. This proved to be an important piece of evidence for Heaney&#8217;s worthiness to have his name given to a crater on Mercury.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div id=\"attachment_5268\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5268\" id=\"longdesc-return-5268\" class=\"wp-image-5268 size-thumbnail\" tabindex=\"-1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Jack-Wright-PhD-student-2-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Jack Wright, PhD student, STEM\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" longdesc=\"https:\/\/ounews.co?longdesc=5268&amp;referrer=5265\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5268\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jack Wright, PhD student, STEM<\/p><\/div>\n<p>This is not the first time that the OU has contributed names to Mercury. Crater names Aneirin and Sanai suggested by Professor Rothery were approved in 2014 and last year a scarp was named Unity Rupes at Jack Wright&#8217;s suggestion.<\/p>\n<p>This research is part of the OU&#8217;s contribution to making a complete set of geological maps of Mercury in preparation for the European Space Agency\u2019s BepiColombo mission to Mercury, which will be launched in 2018. Jack is undertaking a PhD supervised by Professor David Rothery, Dr Matt Balme and Dr Susan Conway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OU PhD student, Jack Wright has been given the honour of naming a 120km diameter crater on Mercury which he identified through his mapping of a section of the planet. Named \u2018Heaney\u2019 after the late Irish poet, author and Nobel Prize winner for literature, Seamus Heaney, the official announcement was made today (21 March) by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":5267,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[521,1185,1364,1418,1505,1704,1794,1904,2084],"class_list":["post-5265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space","tag-crater-naming","tag-jack-wright","tag-mapping","tag-mercury","tag-national-poetry-day","tag-phd","tag-professor-david-rothery","tag-research","tag-space-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}