Reading Nature, Observing Science: Examining Material Practices in the Lick Observatory Archives and Kenneth S. Norris Papers

Illustrating the Cosmos

Our research in the Lick Observatory archives has uncovered correspondence and sketches from Etiènne Trouvelot, a French artist and observer of nature known for his whimsical illustrations of celestial objects. Trouvelot worked with the Lick Observatory's first director, Edward Holden, at the U.S. Naval Observatory while Holden was a professor of astronomy there. It seems they continued to communicate throughout Holden's tenure as director. Here we can see Trouvelot urging Holden to consider the capacities of the eye without the appendage of the telescope.

An oversized set of prints of Trouvelot's drawings (approximately 2' by 3') was gifted to the Lick Observatory in x. These prints are accessible through UCSC Special Collections, or they can be viewed online through the digital collections of the New York Public Library.

The archives also feature several illustrations created by astronomers at the Lick Observatory. Here you can see images by James Keeler, James Schaeberle, and Holden. Astronomers additionally kept personal scrapbooks and copybooks, in which they recorded their observations both mathematically and visually, using sketches, light distribution charts, and vividly descriptive notes to capture what they were seeing in the night sky.

What impact did artists like Trouvelot have on the way astronomers at the Lick perceived the cosmos? How might have artistic representations ultimately shaped the photographic images they produced?  



                                                                                                                                  

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