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Shoot for the Moon!
How 19th-century astronomers photographed the night sky
The Moon (left) May 12, 1859; (right) Feb. 22, 1858, negative May 12, 1859 and February 22, 1858; print about 1862. Warren de la Rue; negative enlarged by Beck & Beck Smith. Albumen silver print, 3 3/8 × 6 7/8 in. Getty Museum, 84.XC.729.481
Body Content
You’ve probably seen this photograph of the moon landing.
Astronaut, American Flag and Space Capsule, 1971, NASA. Gelatin silver print, 14 1/2 × 14 1/4 in. Getty Museum, 84.XP.457.10
But what about the photos that came before it?
From the earliest days of photography, scientists were eager to use photographic technologies to learn more about the moon, the solar system, and the night sky.
Morehouse’s Comet, Yerkes Observatory, about 1900, Keystone View Company. Gelatin silver print. Getty Museum, 84.XC.873.7631
They built telescopes that featured several lenses: one for observation, the other for making photographs. The idea? Photographs could help capture scientific phenomena that were invisible to the naked eye.
Photographs were also thought to provide a more accurate view than observations noted down by hand, without tiring out the eye muscles.
Parallactic Apparatus Newly Installed at the Paris Observatory for Celestial Photography, 1886, Louis Poyet. Nature (13 May 1886), p. 37
Third Quarter, September 16, 1870, Lewis M. Rutherfurd. Albumen silver print, 7 3/8 × 4 13/16 in. Getty Museum, 84.XB.1114.3
There were some limitations, though. For one, astronomers could only photograph when the sky was clear. Long exposure times and changing atmospheric conditions meant that many photographic plates were unusable.
Unable to fully capture what they saw, some astronomers, such as Scottish scientists James Nasmyth and James Carpenter, created plaster models of the moon’s surface based on the view through a telescope. They then photographed the models in bright sunlight against black backdrops to simulate the lunar landscape.
Normal Lunar Crater, in The Moon: Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite (London: Bradbury, Agnew, & Co.), 1885, James Nasmyth and James Carpenter. Woodburytype, 3 7/8 × 5 1/4 in. Getty Museum, 84.XB.1205.24
Nasmyth and Carpenter used these photographs to illustrate their theories about the nature of the moon’s surface, in their book The Moon: Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite.
Despite technical challenges, photographers across the world managed to capture startlingly detailed photographs of the night sky.
Running from 1887 to 1964, the Carte du Ciel (Map of the Sky) project created a vast photographic catalog of the stars, with 17 observatories participating—from Chile to Finland, Australia to Mexico. In a similar vein, astronomers Maurice Loewy and Pierre Puiseux, at the Paris Observatory, sought to map the moon in their work The Photographic Atlas of the Moon.
Starting in 1894, they photographed the moon every clear night for 14 years through a refractor telescope. The published images were overlaid with tissue that mapped the topographic features of the moon.
Photographie Lunaire: Posidonius-Atlas-Corne Boréale 26 Avril 1898 7 h 9 (Lunar Photograph: Posidonius-Atlas-Horn Borialis April 26, 1898 7h 9), 1898, Maurice Loewy and Pierre Puiseux. Heliogravure, 29 1/2 × 22 in. Getty Museum, 2020.107. Gift of Sharyn and Bruce Charnas
Photographie Lunaire: Posidonius-Atlas-Corne Boréale 26 Avril 1898 7 h 9 (Lunar Photograph: Posidonius-Atlas-Horn Borialis April 26, 1898 7h 9), 1898, Maurice Loewy and Pierre Puiseux. Heliogravure, 29 1/2 × 22 in. Getty Museum, 2020.107. Gift of Sharyn and Bruce Charnas
Many of these detailed photographs remained reference points for astronomers right up until the mid-20th century, when the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union led to lunar images of increasing clarity.
And, ultimately, the ability to take a photograph from the surface of the moon itself!
Astronaut on the Moon, about 1971, NASA. Gelatin silver print, 7 1/2 × 7 3/8 in. Getty Museum, 84.XP.775.13
