New Names on Ceres

Often, the names of features on planetary bodies are connected through a specific theme -- for example, many features on the Moon have been named after famous scientists. NASA's Dawn mission, together with the International Astronomical Union, established that craters on Ceres would be named for agricultural deities from all over the world, and other features would be named for agricultural festivals. Ceres itself was named after the Roman goddess of corn and harvests by its discoverer, Giuseppe Piazzi, who spotted it with his telescope in 1801. Since March 2015, Dawn has been orbiting Ceres and sending back many intriguing images and other data about its features.

Using suggestions from the Dawn team, the IAU recently approved 25 new Ceres feature names tied to theme of agricultural deities, marked in yellow on the map. Emesh Crater, for example, is named for the Sumerian god of vegetation and agriculture. Jumi is the Latvian god of fertility of the field.

The newly named surface features vary in size. Thrud, for example, is a crater with a diameter of 4.8 miles (7.8 kilometers) within the larger crater Zadeni, while Mlezi has a diameter of 28 miles (42 kilometers).