Evening all,
Wide shot of Mare Nectaris, the Sea of Nectar. Giovanni Battista Riccioli, the Jesuit Priest who gave the moon such romantic names as the present one, has made Nectaris a pool of Christian figures surrounding the sweet sea (He threw the heretic Galileo into the Ocean of Storms along with Copernicus and the Greek astronomer and Heliocentrist, Aristarchus and anyone else whom he and the church disagreed with).
Saints Theophilus, Cyrillus and below them, Catharina are joined by Saint Isidorus with Santbech, the Aristotelean astronomer, Capella named for the Late Roman astronomer who had the Earth at the centre of everything. The large half bite of a crater, Fractastorius is named for Girolamo Fracastoro, the Italian astronomer who was determined to fit the universe by placing the planets into concentric spheres centred on the Earth.
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.
