Cruising the moon's terminator last night waiting for Saturn to rise I spotted this odd shaped crater (the one with the twin craters on opposite sides of its rim), turned out to be Agatharchides P. That led me to look at the larger formation to the E which turned out to be Gassendi, that was a coincidence because I am reading The Planets by Dava Sobel and in particular the chapter on Mercury - and guess what - Gassendi turns out to be the first astronomer to have observed a transit of Mercury on November 7 1631 as had been predicted by Kepler. What a nice coincidence (yes the pictures not that good but I thought I would share the feeling I had of being connected with the history of astronomy) doubly so as there is a Mercury transit later this year on November 9th.
