[bkm2304 (Richard Brown)]

Hi all,

Pic of Archimedes and surrounding terrain - or is that Lunain? Archimedes dominates. Mons Apennines flank the lava plains to the south.

Wallace is named after Alfred Russell the Victorian naturalist and journeyman who realised the fundamentals of natural selection as a result of his collecting expeditions all around the world especially SE Asia. He also published a book refuting Percival Lowell's claim of canals and civilisations on Mars.

Huxley after Thomas Henry was the "Bulldog" of Darwinian theory. He famously debated Soapy Sam Wilberforce at the Oxford Union on the topic. Huxley has an Australian connection, having visited here on the survey ship Rattlesnake. He accompanied Kennedy (of the Kennedy and Jackey Jackey tragedy) on explorations of Queensland, married an Australian girl and was short - listed to be professor of Zoology at the new Sydney University.

Beer named after 19thC German astronomer and moon fan Wilhelm. Half brother to composer Myerbeer (les Hugeunots being his most popular opera still widely performed) . Beer produced a high precision map of the moon and in 1840 calculated the rotation of Mars to 0.1S of today's estimate. The sad thing is that Beer crater is tiny - 9km!


Next to Beer is Feuillee after Louis a 17th C polymath who discovered the Humboldt Current before Humboldt!!

Sinus Lunicus was renamed recently to honour the crash landing of Soviet probe, Lunik 2 the first probe to reach the moon in 1959, just over from Palus Putredinis or Rotting Marsh which was the landing site of Apollo15 (just out of picture) at the base of Mount Hadley.

Bancroft after Wilder Dwight, American physical chemist and founding editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry. After 36 years as editor he was forced out and considered something of a "wrong headed gadfly". Not sure why he got a moon hole though.

Finally, Conon, after Conon of Samos, ancient Greek astronomer remembered for giving Coma Berenices its name.

22" Newtonian, DMK21 Stack of 600 images from 2500ish.

Richard