Hi all,
Deslandres crater is a very complex, very large (256km Dia.) structure with lots of overlying features. Named for Henri-Alexandre Deslandres, French astronomer best remembered as a pioneer of heliospectrography.
Within the ruins of Deslandres is Hell - the crater not the scary place - named for Hungarian astronomer and Jesuit Priest, Maximillian Hell (1720-1792) who observed the historical 1769 transit of Venus from northern Finland, also observed by Captain Cook from Tahiti. The observations of this transit were the brain-child of Edmund Halley who saw it as an opportunity to refine the distance to the sun and size of Venus - two critical measurements for placing us in perspective in the Solar System.
What is left of crater Lexell (62km Dia.) is named for Anders Lexell (1740-1784), mathematician and celestial mechanics pioneer who calculated the orbit of Uranus.
Crater Walther (128km Dia.) named for Bernhard Walther (1430-1509), German amateur astronomer who, prior to Tycho, was a superb observational and positional astronomer. So good were his observations (no telescopes invented yet!) that none other than Copernicus used his observations (although mis-attributing them) in formulating his Heliocentric theory. Walther had top instruments for his time and a printing press (as you do) so he could publish astronomical works as well! And just to keep the name-dropping going, Walther's house was bought by artist Albrecht Durer after his death.
Approximately 2000 frames taken with Celestron CPC C9.25"and ZWO 178M processed via AS3! with final stack of 10%,then sharpened in Registax.
Hi res version on
flickr.
Thanks
Richard
