Around 450 BC, Democritus was the first to express the idea that
the Moon was not perfectly smooth but had features such as "lofty
mountains and hollow valleys". It is in 1645 that Michel Florent
van Langren, using a telescope, first attempted to name some
features of the moon. His work is considered the first true map of
the Moon, and it included several maria, craters, and mountains. He
gave names of catholic royalty to craters, and catholic saints to
mountains. In 1647, Johannes Hevelius produced his own lunar atlas,
in a work called 'Selenographia', ignoring the nomenclature of Van
Langren, and instead named lunar features from corresponding
terrestrial features on the Earth.
The modern scheme of lunar nomenclature was devised by
Giambattista Riccioli, a Jesuit priest and scholar from Ferrara in
northern Italy. His Almagestum Novum was published in 1651, and his
work was widely used by Jesuit teachers of the time. The naming of
features followed the following rule: the moon was divided in 8
regions (called 'octants') and craters were named based on the
octant in which they were found. Octants I to III used names from
ancient Greece, such as Plato, Atlas, and Archimedes. Octants IV to
VI were names from the ancient Roman empire, such as Julius Caesar,
Tacitus, and Taruntius. And octants VII and VIII were for scholars,
writers, and philosophers. The system was scientifically useful and
it was easy to later include more names following the same scheme.
Thus it came to replace the nomenclature of Van Langren and
Hevelius.
The International Astronomical Union formally adopted Riccioli's
lunar nomenclature by a vote in 1935, giving standard names to 600
lunar features.
The cache is not at the above coordinates, it is hidden at N 48
2A.BCD W 123 1E.FGH
Find the name of the Moon feature depicted in each figure, and
translate the required letter into a coordinate using A=0, B=1,
C=2, etc.
All these figures were extracted from the Interactive Moon image
at:
http://www/oarval.org/MoonMapen.htm
or try"
http://www.lunarepublic.com/atlas/
although any other Moon Atlas could be used in principle.
A = CRATER _ _ _ _ _ 1st letter
B = CRATER _ _ _ _ _ _ 1st letter
C = CRATER _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 1st letter
D = CRATER _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2nd letter
E = MARE _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 1st letter
F = MONTES _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 3rd letter
G = MARE _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 6th letter
H = MARE _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 3rd letter
You can check your answers for this puzzle on
Geochecker.com