MOON TOUR EDDINGTON CRATER

Challenge yourself this month by locating one of the trickiest impacts on the lunar surface

Usually the lunar features we profile here are very easy to find, if not with the naked eye then at least through a pair of binoculars or a small telescope. They are large, bright craters; wide, dark seas or towering sunlit mountain ranges. This month’s target is going to provide you with much more of a challenge: it’s small, tucked away almost on the Moon’s limb and so tricky to spot you probably won’t find it the first time you look…

Eddington crater is named in honor of British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington, one of the first astronomers to figure out the nuclear processes that take place in the hearts of stars. Born in the picturesque Lake District town of Kendal, Eddington was a contemporary of Albert Einstein, with the great physicist calling Eddington a genius. The author of many popular astronomy books and a regular radio broadcaster, Eddington spent a lot of time doing what we refer to now as outreach – it could be said that he was an earlier version of Professor Brian Cox.