Stieglitz Crater Honors American Photographer Alfred Stieglitz

Summary: Stieglitz Crater honors American photographer Alfred Stieglitz as a north polar latitude crater occupying planet Mercury’s Borealis Planitia (Northern Plain).

Detail of Map of the H-1 (Borealis) Quadrangle of Mercury shows Stieglitz Crater as north polar occupant of Mercury’s Borealis Planitia (North Plains): courtesy NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) / Johns Hopkins University of Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Institution of Washington / USGS (U.S. Geological Survey), via USGS Astrogeology Science Center / Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature

Stieglitz Crater honors American photographer Alfred Stieglitz as a north polar region crater lying on smallest, innermost Solar System planet Mercury’s Borealis Planitia (Northern Plain).

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature’s (WGPSN) website, which is maintained by the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) Astrogeology Science Center, announced Feb. 28, 2012: “The name Stieglitz has been approved for a crater on Mercury.”

Stieglitz is centered at 72.54 degrees north latitude, 292.37 degrees west longitude, according to the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. The northern hemisphere crater’s northernmost and southernmost latitudes occur at 73.63 degrees north and 71.44 degrees north, respectively. The polar region crater obtains its easternmost and westernmost longitudes at 288.7 degrees west and 296.03 degrees west, respectively. Stieglitz Crater’s diameter measures 100 kilometers.

Stieglitz Crater resides on Borealis Planitia (Northern Plain). The feature occurs as smooth plains in Mercury’s northern polar area.

Borealis Planitia is centered at 67.3 degrees north latitude, 327.4 degrees west longitude. The northernmost and southernmost latitudes of the northern polar plains stretch to 86.9 degrees north and 29.5 degrees north, respectively. Its easternmost and westernmost longitudes reach 225.4 degrees west and 134.6 degrees west, respectively. Borealis Planitia’s diameter spans 3,450 kilometers.

A photo acquired Aug. 27, 2012, by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) robotic MESSENGER (Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft shows Stieglitz Crater’s ejecta blanket. Secondary impacts have formed linear chains radiating from Stieglitz Crater’s larger impact. Smaller secondaries appear as very small, irregularly distributed craters.

MESSENGER launched Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2004, at 06:15:57 Universal Time (2:15 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time) from east central Florida’s Cape Canaveral. Three Mercury fly-bys took place Jan. 14, 2008, at a distance of 125 miles; Oct. 6, 2008, at 124 miles; and Sep. 29, 2009, at 124 miles.

On March 18, 2011, preparatory to its first Mercury science mission, MESSENGER entered a near-polar eccentric orbit around Mercury. On April 4, 2011, MESSENGER began data collection for the science mission. A one-year extended mission commenced March 18, 2012. A second extended mission, granted for two years, began on March 18, 2013.

Stieglitz Crater honors American photographer (Jan. 1, 1864-July 13, 1946). Stieglitz captured a range of photographic subjects, including events, nature, people, places and things, in his determination to establish photography as a modern art form.

Clouds numbered among his nature photographs. His first extant cloud photographs date to 1922, according to Judy Annear, senior curator photographs at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, in the Spring 2011 issue of American Art. Four hundred cloud photographs have survived from the period between 1922 and 1931.

In his article, “How I Came to Photograph Clouds,” published in the 1923 issue of Amateur Photographer and Photography, Stieglitz explained the motivation for his focusing on clouds as an attempt to discern what he had learned from four decades as a photographer. He noted 1923 as “40 years this year” from the start of his studies with German photochemist and photographer Hermann Wilhelm Vogel (March 26, 1834-Dec. 17, 1898) at Technische Hochschule in Berlin, Germany.

In selecting clouds to express his philosophy of life, Stieglitz was pursuing a natural phenomenon that had been on his mind for over 35 years. He traced his interest in the relationship between clouds and “the rest of the world” to a “few days” passed in Mürren in the Bernese Highlands (German: Berner Oberland), southern canton of Bern, west-central Switzerland.

Initially, Stieglitz associated his cloud photographs with music. Early titles for this photographs included Music: A Sequence of Ten Cloud Photographs (1922) and Songs of the Sky (1923), according to the Art Institute of Chicago’s webpages on the art museum’s Alfred Stieglitz Collection.

Judy Annear’s article identifies 1925 as the year in which Stieglitz switched to Equivalents as the name for his cloud photographs. He viewed his cloud depictions as expressions of his emotions.

The takeaways for Stieglitz Crater, which honors American photographer Alfred Stieglitz, are that the crater is founded on Borealis Planitia (Northern Plains) in planet Mercury’s north polar region; and that the crater’s namesake, who explored photography as a modern art form, sought to capture the expressive quality of clouds in hundreds of photographs taken between 1922 and 1931.

Image acquired Aug. 27, 2012, by NASA’s robotic MESSENGER spacecraft shows Stieglitz Crater’s ejecta blanket; secondary impact-formed linear chains radiate from the larger Stieglitz impact; in the image’s middle, smaller secondaries appear as very small, irregularly-distributed craters; north is to the right, with the sun low on the horizon; NASA ID PIA16422; image addition date 2012-10-10; image credit NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington: May be used for any purpose without prior permission, via NASA JPL Photojournal

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Detail of Map of the H-1 (Borealis) Quadrangle of Mercury shows Stieglitz Crater as north polar occupant of Mercury’s Borealis Planitia (North Plains): courtesy NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) / Johns Hopkins University of Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Institution of Washington / USGS (U.S. Geological Survey), via USGS Astrogeology Science Center / Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature @ https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/images/H-1.pdf

Image acquired Aug. 27, 2012, by NASA’s robotic MESSENGER spacecraft shows Stieglitz Crater’s ejecta blanket; secondary impact-formed linear chains radiate from the larger Stieglitz impact; in the image’s middle, smaller secondaries appear as very small, irregularly-distributed craters; north is to the right, with the sun low on the horizon; NASA ID PIA16422; image addition date 2012-10-10; image credit NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington: May be used for any purpose without prior permission, via NASA JPL Photojournal @ https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16422

For further information:

Annear, Judy. “Clouds to Rain -- Stieglitz and the Equivalents.” American Art, vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 16-19.
Available via JSTOR @ https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/660027

Art Institute of Chicago. “Equivalents.” The Art Institute of Chicago > Stieglitz Series.
Available @ https://archive.artic.edu/stieglitz/equivalents/

Grego, Peter. Venus and Mercury, and How to Observe Them. Astronomers’ Observing Guides. New York NY: Springer Science+Business Media, 2008.

International Astronomical Union (IAU) / U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. “Borealis Planitia.” USGS Astrogeology Science Center > Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature > Nomenclature > The Moon. Last updated April 17, 2018.
Available @ https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/823

International Astronomical Union (IAU) / U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. “Stieglitz.” USGS Astrogeology Science Center > Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature > Nomenclature > The Moon. Last updated Feb. 27, 2012.
Available @ https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/14928

International Astronomical Union (IAU) / U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. “Target: Mercury.” USGS Astrogeology Science Center > Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature > Nomenclature > Mercury.
Available @ https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Page/MERCURY/target

Jenner, Lynn, page ed. “Stieglitz Strikes.” NASA > Mission Pages > MESSENGER > Multimedia. Page last updated Oct. 10, 2012.
Available @ https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/multimedia/messenger_orbit_image20121010_1.html

Marriner, Derdriu. “Stickney Crater Honors Phobos Discoverer Asaph Hall’s First Wife.” Earth and Space News. Wednesday, July 3, 2013.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2013/07/stickney-crater-honors-phobos.html

Stieglitz, Alfred. “How I Came to Photograph Clouds.” Amateur Photographer and Photography, vol. 56, no. 1819 (Sept. 19, 1923): 255.
Available @ http://jnevins.com/steiglitzclouds.htm

Stieglitz, Alfred. “How I Came to Photograph Clouds.” Page 237. In: Richard Whelan, comp., Stieglitz on Photography: His Selected Essays and Notes. New York NY: Aperture Foundation, 2000.

U.S. Geological Survey Astrogeology Science Center. “Mercury Crater Named Stieglitz.” Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature > News. Feb. 28, 2012.
Available @ https://astrogeology.usgs.gov/news/nomenclature/mercury-crater-named-stieglitz