Moonstruck

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) may name a crater in the moon's Sea of Tranquility after a deceased Harvard professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, a spokesman for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said this week.

A task force will propose the name of Donald Menzel, the former director of the Harvard College Observatory who died last year, at a full meeting of the IAU this spring, James Cornell, a spokesman for the astrophysics center, said.

Menzel was an authority on the sun and the sun's corona, Cornell said. He wrote 26 books in his lifetime, and his last, concerning unidentified flying objects, was published posthumously, Cornell added.

The hole which may be named the Menzel Crater is located in the southeast portion of the Sea of Tranquility and is 3.7 kilometers in diameter, making it the most significant feature in the area, Cornell said.

George B. Field, director of the department of Astronomy, said the planned naming is "very appropriate because moon craters are named for great scientists, and Menzel was a great scientist."