Named in honor of Carle M. Pieters, geologist on the faculty of Brown University, Providence. Pieters obtained the first compositionally diagnostic observations of an Earth-approaching minor planet when she observed
(433) Eros during its 1974–75 apparition. She has extensively studied the surface composition of geological units on the near side of the Moon using groundbased reflectance spectroscopy combined with laboratory measurements of returned lunar samples. Pieters has also developed and applied remote sensing techniques for the study of the Earth, Mars and Venus using airborne and spacecraft data. (M 13177) _ _.