Crater Mie on Mars named after German physicist Gustav Mie

Crater Mie on Mars was named in 1973 (approved by the International Astronomical Union) for the German physicist Gustav Mie (1868-1957). This Martian impact crater in Utopia Planitia on the northern hemisphere is about 100 km (65 mi) in diameter and located at 48.1N and 139.6E [1,2]. An image, taken by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) and released by NASA in December 2003, shows clouds and dust to the east of Mie [3]. Viking 2 landed near Mie in September 1976 [4].

Gustav Mie was born in 1868 in Rostock in northeast Germany and died in 1957 in Freiburg in southwest Germany [5,6]. His contributions to physics include optical studies of colloidal gold suspensions and the analysis of light scattering.  His name is primarily associated with the terms Mie scattering and Mie effect, honoring his work on the scattering of electromagnetic radiation by a homogeneous spherical particle that exceeds the size (above 100 nm) of Raleigh scattering conditions [7]. Gustav Mie's three-letter last name may look like a shorthand or a wrongly spelled Greek letter, but Mie theory has a prominent place in physics today as well as in the atmospheric sciences of  Earth and other planets [8].

Mie is pronounced like the English personal pronoun me.

Keywords: astronomy, planetary science, areology (science of Mars), areography (geology of Mars), polarimetry, Mie solution, terminology.

References and more to explore
[1] Ulf von Rauchhaupt: Der Neunte Kontinent - Die wissenschaftliche Eroberung des Mars. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, November 2010; page 71.
[2] Google Mars Lab: www.google.com/mars/.
[3] NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems: www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/12/12/.
[4] NASA Goddard Space Flight Center > Viking 2 - Utopia Planitia: http://mola.gsfc.nasa.gov/viking2.html.
[5] Pedro Lilienfeld: Gustav Mie: the person. Applied Optics 20 November 1991, 30 (33), pp. 4696-4698 [www.ugr.es/~aquiran/ciencia/mie/mie_the_person.pdf].
[6] Gustav Mie: diogenes.iwt.uni-bremen.de/vt/laser/wriedt/Mie_Type_Codes/Gustav_Mie/body_gustav_mie.html.
[7] Gerald Brezesinki and Hans-Jörg Mögel: Grenzflächen und Kolloide. Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg, Berlin und Oxford, 1993; pages 129-131.
[8] Michael I. Mishchenko and Larry D. Travid: Gustav Mie and the Evolving Discipline of Electromagnetic Scattering by Particles. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. 2008, 89, pp. 1853-1861 [journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2632.1].