Mary Adela Blagg

Blagg crater, named after English astronomer Mary Adela Blagg.

Mary Adela Blagg was born in 1858 and spent the majority of her life in the small English town of Cheadle. It wasn't until she was in her 40's when her interest in astronomy took off. After attending a series of lectures given by Joseph Hardcastle (the grandson of Uranus discoverer William Herschel), Blagg was inspired to begin original work. Hardcastle encouraged her and suggested she investigate selenography, the scientific mapping of the Moon. At the time, lunar nomenclature was a mess - different names were being used for the same features, and the same name was being used for different lunar formations. Blagg began the arduous task of collecting and combining the names given to all lunar formations in the maps available at the time and a Collated List was published in 1913. When the International Astronomical Union was founded in 1920, Blagg served on its Lunar Commission. She helped prepare a definitive list of names of lunar features, and in 1935, her work entitled Named Lunar Formations was published and became the standard authority for all matters of lunar nomenclature.

While sorting out the great disarray of selenography, Blagg was also researching variable stars. She studied the eclipsing binary 𝛽 Lyrae and the long-period variable stars RT Cygni, V Cassiopeiae, and U Persei.

Her brilliant work on selenography earned Blagg a permanent place on the Moon in the form of Blagg crater. So, the next time you're out looking at the Moon, take a glance at its center, in the Sinus Medii lunar mare region, for a look at Blagg crater.