Mare Humorum

From The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings - Atlas, by E. L. Trouvelot, New York, 1882.  In the accompanying The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings - Manual, Trouvelot has this to say about this image:

PLATE VI. MARE HUMORUM.
From a study made in 1875.
A view of one of the lunar plains, or so-called seas (Maria), with an encircling mountainous wall consisting of volcano-like craters in various stages of subsidence and dislocation.  The sun-light coming from the west casts strong shadows from all the elevations eastward, and is just rising on the terminator, where the rugged structure of the Moon's surface is best seen.  The lighter portions are the more elevated mountainous tracts and crater summits.  The detailed description of this Plate given in the body of the MANUAL is repeated here for convenience of reference:
The "Mare Humorum", or sea of moisture, as it is called, which is represented on Plate VI., is one of the smaller gray lunar plains.  Its diameter, which is very nearly the same in all directions, is about 270 miles, the total area of this plain being about 50,000 square miles.  It is one of the most distinct plains of the Moon, and is easily seen with the naked eye on the left-hand side of the disk.  The floor of the plain is, like that of the other gray plains, traversed by several systems of very extended but low hills and ridges, while small craters are disseminated upon its surface.  The color of this formation is of a dusky greenish gray along the border, while in the interior it is of a lighter shade, and is of brownish olivaceous tint.  This plain, which is surrounded by high clefts and rifts, well illustrates the phenomena of dislocation and subsidence.  The double-ringed crater Vitello, whose walls rise from 4,000 to 5,000 feet in height, is seen in the upper left-hand corner of the gray plain.  Close to Vitello, at the east, is the large broken ring-plain Lee, and farther east, and a little below, is a similarly broken crater called Doppelmayer.  Both of these open craters have mountainous masses and peaks on their floor, which is on a level with that of the Mare Humorum.  A little below, and to the left of these objects, is seen a deeply embedded oval crater, whose walls barely rise above the level of the plain.  On the right-hand side of the great plain, is a long fault, with a system of fracture running along its border.  On this right-hand side, may be seen a part of the line of the terminator, which separates the light from the darkness.  Towards the lower righthand corner, is the great ring-plain Gassendi, 55 miles in diameter, with its system of fractures and its central mountains, which rise from 3,000 to 4,000 feet above its floor.  This crater slopes southward towards the plain, showing the subsidence to which it has been submitted.  While the northern portion of the wall of this crater rises to 10,000 feet, that on the plain is only 500 feet high, and is even wholly demolished at one place where the floor of the crater is in direct communication with the plain.  In the lower part of the mare, and a little to the west of the middle line, is found the crater Agatharchides, which shows below its north wall the marks of rills impressed by a flood of lava, which once issued from the side of the crater.  On the left-hand side of the plain, is seen the half demolished crater Hippalus, resembling a large bay, which has its interior strewn with peaks and mountains.  On this same side can be seen one of the most important systems of clefts and fractures visible on the Moon, these clefts varying in length from 150 to 200 miles.

More of Trouvelot's astronomical drawings can be found here.

Philipp Fauth's Map of the Moon

Philipp Fauth (1867 - 1941) was a German amateur astronomer who is best known for two things: his advocacy of Hans Hörbiger's semi-crackpot Welteislehre, and his amazing, highly detailed contour maps of the Moon.  The above image is a small section of his great lunar map on which he was working when he died.  Fauth's son later completed it and the map was finally published in 1964.  The contour lines are not based on proper measurements but are careful estimates based on drawings.  The large crater in the bottom right corner is Tycho.  A good account of the Philipp Fauth and his Moon Atlas can be found in The Astronomical Scrapbook, Joseph Ashbrook, 1984.

Early Morning Birds

Today I woke at 6am and left for the train at my normal time of 7am.  In spite of the sky being overcast, it felt strangely light; I had to look at my watch to check that it wasn't really 8am.  Maybe I felt that way because I had just had a particularly good night's sleep.

High over the River Kennet in the town centre, 5 cormorants flew in from the north-east, followed the river for a while and then turned towards the north-west.  Cormorants flying always remind of F-111 fighter-bombers with their wings in the forward position.  It must be something in the shape of the nose and the position of the wings along the fuselage.  They seem less back-heavy than geese and swans.

A bit further along an indian-looking man was creating a tremendous racket by simultaneously feeding the ducks on the river and the pigeons on the bank.  Splashing and quacking, and loud honks from Canada geese flying in to join the fun.  I don't think the inhabitants of  the nearby expensive flats will be too keen on being woken by this early morning feeding frenzy.  Just around the corner, a blackbird was quietly perched on a hawthorn bush, looking as if it was trying to pluck up the courage to go and join the pigeons.

The Misanthropic Principle

From a comment by Blake Stacey on a post at Evolution Blog:

...  "If the fundamental constants or physical laws of the Universe were the slightest iddle-widdle bit different, then evil could not exist. Therefore, the Universe must have been finely tuned for evil!"
I call it my Misanthropic Principle.

The 9-Day Old Moon

One of the pictures from Ball's Popular Guide to the Heavens that inspired me to take up astronomy back in 1971.  Even now it gives me a little thrill to look at it.