China releases recommended Chinese names for Mars craters

The Chinese Astronomical Society (CAS) has recently released the list of recommended Chinese names of 1,136 Mars craters on its website.

Picture released on Aug. 23, 2016 shows the concept portraying what the Mars rover and lander would look like. [Photo/Xinhua]

The data will be available for public use. Users can find the Chinese names at Glossary of Astronomical Terms operated by the National Astronomical Data Center.

Previously, the CAS had released the first batch of recommended Chinese names of 811 Mars terrain features.

In order to facilitate scientific research and popularize science, the CAS invited experts to translate almost 2,000 Mars terrain terms issued by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) before July 15, 2020, into Chinese.

The translations were reviewed and approved by a special committee for astronomical terms affiliated to the CAS and the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies.

Since the 17th century when the telescope was invented, astronomers have been observing Mars and systematically named its surface albedo features. The naming of the topographical features on the planets within the solar system was initiated by the IAU after it was founded in 1919.