| Tuesday, 29 September 2009 | |
On July 9 the “International Union for Astronomy” approved in a formal meeting, to label a new place on the planet Mercury, with a radius of 100 km, the name of Gebran Khalil Gebran. Dr. Nelly Mouawad completed high school at the “Sagesse Institute” in Beirut, and joined the University of Cologne in Germany to obtain a doctorate in astronomy. She is currently a researcher with the Department of Astronomy at the University of Maryland, and operates in coordination with the Gibran Academy at the same university. The core of Moawad studies is the configuration of the interior of the planet Mercury using information from Earth, and others from the “MESSENGER” team, specialists on the planet Mercury , thanks to which Many picture of Mercury where seen on Earth. This led to the discovery of new areas previously unkown. Usually such areas are not labeled unless scientists are sure that they are of the utmost importance, scientifically and astronomically, to the planet. Dr. Moawad suggested during a special science meeting to name one of these newly discovered areas “Gibran”, and she gathered information and documents to support her proposal and submitted them to the labels committee that in return submitted them to the International Union for Astronomy. The proposal was accepted in their last meeting on July 9. |
The World Federation of “Gibran studies” declared that an unprecedented scientific breakthrough has been achieved by the Lebanese astronomical scientist, Dr. Nelly Mouawad at the University of Maryland.