Mare Humorum (The Sea of Moisture) taken on 5/3/24.
Tucked away in the south western corner below the sea of storms and next to the sea of clouds, M Humorum is a lava filled impact basin formed by an impactor about 3.9 billion years ago.
Gassendi is named for yet another Catholic Priest/Astronomer/Mathematician. Pierre Gassendi was a true genius and under rated nowadays: He pioneered the scientific method, promoted the idea that matters was made of atoms, was the first person to observe a transit - Venus then Mercury - and demonstrated the conservation of horizontal momentum.
Mersenius named for Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), also a Catholic Priest, the father of harmonics and expert in Prime Numbers. He was on speaking terms with, wait for it, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, Thomas Hobbes to name a few.
On the shore opposite Gassendi is crater Doppelmayr named for German astronomer, Johan Doppelmayer (1671-1750).
Crater Puiseux named for French astronomer Pierre Puiseux (1855-1928) is an elegant example of a "ghost" crater, a lava filled crater displaying just a whisper of its walls.
Promontorium Kelvin ,named for physicist Lord William Kelvin (1824-1907) juts out into the sea and into a collection of wrinkle ridges or "dorsa"(Latin for back). There's not an area of physics that Kelvin didn't study. But he was blind to many things. He scoffed at the possibility of heavier than air flying machines, thought radiation was untrue and didn't see a future for radio!
ZWO 178mm camera, Celestron 9.25" telescope. Approx. 2,000 frames stacked in Autostakkert!3 and sharpened in Registax.
