Paul Bickford
Northern News Services

Hay River (Oct 04/04) - What do Mars and Hay River have in common? The name Diamond Jenness.

In the South Slave town, it's the moniker of a high school. On the Red Planet, it's the informal name of a rock studied by the NASA rover Opportunity.

At Diamond Jenness Secondary school, students are taking note of their high school's name now featured in the cosmos.

"It is kind of neat," says Kyle Gibb. "Diamond Jenness is noticed and appreciated."

"It makes the school more significant," added Corey Coady.

Kori Bourne believes it enhances school pride.

Physics teacher Chris Irvine thinks it demonstrates the North is not as isolated as some people might think.

"It shows the world is looking in and it's not just us looking out," he said.

Rocks named

Two Canadian scientists working on the NASA mission to Mars have named rocks in the Endurance crater after several of the North's communities, historical figures and geological features.

One of those scientists, Dr. Scott McLennan of the State University of New York, was the first to suggest names from the Arctic Islands.

Now, rocks and other features are called Tuktoyaktuk, Baffin, Inuvik, Mackenzie, Ellesmere and more.

A hole drilled into the Diamond Jenness rock is called Holman.

"You start on a theme and work through it," McLennan says, noting there are many hundreds of things to name on Mars.

'Silly' idea

The geographic theme began when the rover entered Endurance crater and one scientist thought a rock was shaped like Tennessee. The inspiration for names moved north from there.

"It's a little bit silly, but that's the way it is," McLennan says, adding the unofficial names help scientists do their work.

The International Astronomical Union is responsible for officially naming features on planets and their moons.

Diamond Jenness, the person whose name has been attached to the high school, a peninsula on Victoria Island and now the Mars rock, was a New Zealand-born anthropologist and Arctic scholar.

Jenness, who died in 1969, was part of the 1911-1912 Canadian Arctic expedition.

He was chief anthropologist at the National Museum and well-known for writing about Canada's aboriginal people.