Ewen Whitaker - Other Achievements

Other Achievements

First to apply the Zwicky technique of differential UV/Red photography to the Moon, which maps areas of differing chemical composition of the lunar surface. Results used in Apollo site choices.

Discovery and approximate determination of the orbital eccentricity and inclination of Miranda, Uranus's 5th satellite, made possible by a simple plate-measuring method that he devised, which gave a tenfold increase in precision (from plates taken decades earlier).

With colleague D. W. Arthur. ad about 60 new names to anonymous craters near the edge of the moon that had been brought into prominence in the Rectified Atlas. The names were adopted internationally. More recently, he chose 14 favorably located farside craters to commemorate the Challenger and Columbia astronauts who lost their lives in the two disasters. These were also adopted internationally over competing suggestions.

Whitaker determined, with considerable confidence, the dates on which Galileo made his drawings of the Moon and composed the various relevant sections of his "Sidereus Nuncius."

He devised a logical lettering system for designating unnamed craters on the Moon's farside. This was adopted unanimously for universal use by the IAU in 2006, as was the corrected list of letters for nearside craters which L. E. Anderson and he compiled in 1982.