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

Photographing the Cosmos

Case 4: Eclipse Expeditions in Context The photographs and prints gathered in this case pertain to the eclipse expedition program that the Lick astronomers undertook between 1889 and 1932. For the majority of these journeys, the astronomers used a 40ft portable camera designed by J. M. Schaeberle. The images displayed here foreground three themes suggested by the archive: understanding the sun, onsite labour, and the importance of framing.

Creating the Images

Photographing the night sky was itself quite labor-intensive. Because the earth rotates, the observer had to carefully guide the telescope throughout the night in order to create an unblurred image of the object under observation. This was difficult to accomplish, especially given the length of exposure time required to capture the light of distant bodies. In his copybook, Charles Perrine wrote an early reflection on the merits of astrophotography, one page of which has been scanned and displayed here. He discusses the difficulty of capturing the light of nebulae, noting that the action of guiding the telescope often resulted in the loss of structural detail. The copybook itself is on display in Case 1: In Relation to Nature. Barnard also discusses the labor of the process in his 1913 book Photographs of the Milky Way and of Comets.

Most of the images produced at the Lick were recorded as negatives on glass plates coated with photosensitive chemicals. After working through the night, astronomers often continued to work into the morning, developing the negatives they had created. They often found that the images were overexposed, underexposed, or blurry. We have in this archive only a few of the thousands of images created by Lick astronomers, as many were rejected. Many of the original glass negatives created with the telescopes are still housed on the grounds of the Lick Observatory.

Reproducing the Images

These images and documents tell us how difficult it was for astronomers to create these early images of the cosmos, speaking to a certain intensity of labor on the part of the individual astronomer. At the same time, they also archive another story about how these aesthetic concerns impacted the labor of the printers in meeting the expectations of the Lick's directors.

The Lick sent successful images to photogravure (engraving) companies around the country, seeking out the most skilled photographic technicians to create faithful duplicates of the images they had worked so carefully to create. Yet even the best images were often difficult for the printers to reproduce. As you can see with the plates displayed here, the actual object under observation often measured only millimeters in diameter on the plate. The printer was to transfer the image on the glass plate onto a copper plate or another kind of glass plate, which was then coated in ink to produce a print. The creation of the second plate positive was a long process which involved re-exposing the negative onto photosensitive materials--materials that were thicker, more viscous, and more unstable than the chemicals used to create paper prints now; and then dipping the plate in a bath of acid in order to etch into it the light portions of the image, leaving a raised image on the plate to be coated in ink. Accordingly, the very materiality of these materials and the difficulty of manipulating them often interfered with the printers' attempts to carry the exact resolution and sharpness of the original image over to the second plates. Edward Barnard's book, mentioned above, also covers the printing process in detail. To read more about the reproduction process, see Alexander Pang's article on astrophotography at the Lick, cited at the bottom of this page.

Astronomers could not know what many of these distant, often invisible objects actually looked like; they were working within certain ideas about what they should look like and how to best represent them to the public. They wanted to create visually stunning photographs. Their letters to the photogravure companies had many complaints--loss of light or structural detail, the lack of clarity and contrast, the lack of depth or "darkness" of the sky behind the object. Their complaints were often aesthetic in nature, as you can see in the letter displayed here. The director here judges the background to be too "intense" and is displeased with the loss of "nebulosity" or the gradation of light. As Alexander Pang has noted, astronomers often invented new aesthetic discourse or concepts--like "nebulosity" and "snappiness"--to describe to the printers how a cosmic body should appear. The Lick's directors often required the printers to try again, in order to darken the background, or to bring out important details from the original image. Yet they would then express concern to the printers that the prints were too retouched and therefore not truly objective pieces of data.

To see more glass plates and images of celestial bodies, and a greater selection of letters exchanged between Lick directors and printing companies, see our digital exhibit.

As noted above, our research in this area builds on the work of Alexander Pang.

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2. The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings Manual, 1882. In the book, Trouvelot writes, "Those unacquainted with the use of optical instruments generally suppose that all astronomical drawings are obtained by the photographic process, and are, therefore, comparatively easy to procure; but this is not true. Although photography renders valuable assistance to the astronomer in the case of the Sun and Moon, as proved by the fine photographs of these objects taken by M. Janssen and Mr. Rutherfurd ; yet, for other subjects, its products are in general so blurred and indistinct that no details of any great value can be secured. A well-trained eye alone is capable of seizing the delicate details of structure and of configuration of the heavenly bodies, which are liable to be affected, and even rendered invisible, by the slightest changes in our atmosphere."
8. "Astronomical Photography and Some of Its Merits," Charles Perrine, circa 1890s. Transcription: "The exposure necessary to bring out the structure of faint nebulae are very long, often of three and four hours duration and for some special objects, ten or twelve hours. These long exposures are attended with difficulties, many of which would disappear if the necessary light action could be secured in one or two hours...the negatives secured with shorter exposure would be of greater excellence and would show structure that is now lost to thinning due to difficulties of guiding [the telescope] during very long exposures."
9. Andromeda Nebula, photographed by Edward Barnard, 1894.
10. Great Spiral Nebula (M51), photographer unknown (likely James Keeler), 1899. This is a four-hour exposure of the Great Spiral Nebula using the 36" Crossley reflector. Note the loss of detail described by Perrine or "faint nebulosity" described in the letters here; compare with the image of the spiral galaxy from 1914. N.B.: This is now known as the Whirlpool Galaxy. Astronomers did not yet understand the difference between nebulae and galaxies, believing that they were of the same nature. Most thought that all of these distant structures were contained within the Milky Way galaxy itself. The difference was confirmed in the 1920s; the work of one of the Lick's astronomers, Heber Curtis, contributed in part to this development.
15. Correspondence with Photogravure and Color Company, 1907.
16. Correspondence with Photogravure and Color Company, 1907.
18. Edward Barnard's first photograph of the Milky Way, 1889. Three-hour exposure. Reflecting on this photograph in a publication titled "On the Photographs of the Milky Way at the Lick Observatory in 1889," Barnard writes, "This remarkable picture shows the cloud-like forms like waves of spray. A curving lane of darkness runs from the lower left-hand portion of the picture and curves gracefully upwards to the place of Jupiter. It is singularly like the stem of a great leaf. At the middle of the picture it is seen to pass behind some of the clouds of stars and emerge beyond, showing us clearly which part of the Milky Way at that point is nearest to us... "

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Transcription: "The exposure necessary to bring out the structure of faint nebulae are very long, often of three and four hours duration and for some special objects, ten or twelve hours. These long exposures are attended with difficulties, many of which would disappear if the necessary light action could be secured in one or two hours...the negatives secured with shorter exposure would be of greater excellence and would show structure that is now lost to thinning due to difficulties of guiding [the telescope] during very long exposures."
This is a four-hour exposure of the Great Spiral Nebula using the 36" Crossley reflector. Note the loss of detail described by Perrine or "faint nebulosity" described in the letters here; compare with the image of the spiral galaxy from 1914. N.B.: This is now known as the Whirlpool Galaxy. Astronomers did not yet understand the difference between nebulae and galaxies, believing that they were of the same nature. Most thought that all of these distant structures were contained within the Milky Way galaxy itself. The difference was confirmed in the 1920s; the work of one of the Lick's astronomers, Heber Curtis, contributed in part to this development.
Three-hour exposure. Reflecting on this photograph in a publication titled "On the Photographs of the Milky Way at the Lick Observatory in 1889," Barnard writes, "This remarkable picture shows the cloud-like forms like waves of spray. A curving lane of darkness runs from the lower left-hand portion of the picture and curves gracefully upwards to the place of Jupiter. It is singularly like the stem of a great leaf. At the middle of the picture it is seen to pass behind some of the clouds of stars and emerge beyond, showing us clearly which part of the Milky Way at that point is nearest to us... "