Lunar craters Lunar craters Lunar craters are impact craters on Earth's Moon. The Moon's surface has many craters, almost all of which were formed by impacts. The word "crater" was adopted from the Greek word for vessel - (Κρατήρ a Greek vessel used to mix wine and water). Galileo built his first telescope in late 1609, and turned it to the Moon for the first time on November 30, 1609. He discovered that, contrary to general opinion at that time, the Moon was not a perfect sphere, but had both mountains and cup-like depressions. These were named craters by Schroeter (1791), extending
A. E. Douglass and visible cusps on Venus. Craters on the Moon and Mars are named in his honor. After a 5-year hiatus from astronomy, Douglass left Flagstaff, Arizona in 1906 and accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Physics and Geography at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. Almost immediately upon his arrival in Tucson, Douglass re-established his astronomical research programs using an 8-inch refracting telescope on loan from the Harvard College Observatory and actively began to pursue funding to construct a large research-class telescope in Tucson. Over the next 10 years Douglass was unable to secure funding from the University