Many of the features on the Moon are named for astronomers. So are features on Mars and other planets and moons. And hundreds of asteroids are named for astronomers as well.

But you won’t find many features named for astronomers here on Earth. Quite a few streets and schools are named after them. But when it comes to major features, the list is pretty thin – especially in the United States. One of the few is Mount Langley, a 14,000-foot summit in California. It’s named for Samuel Pierpont Langley, who was a long-time director of the Allegheny Observatory.

To see more features named for astronomers, though, you need to head south – to Australia, New Zealand, and even Antarctica.

In Australia, for example, a river and an estuary are named for Thomas Brisbane, an early governor of the state of New South Wales. And so is the city of Brisbane, the capital of Queensland. In addition to his government duties, Brisbane was an astronomer. He set up Australia’s first major observatory.

In New Zealand, several peaks in a large mountain range are named for astronomers, including Galileo and Copernicus. And an entire range is named for Johannes Kepler.

In Antarctica, many features are named for James Ross, an early explorer. But Ross himself named several features for astronomers, including Cape Smyth and Mount Lubbock – down-to-earth features named for men who studied the stars.

Script by Damond Benningfield