This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

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

Case 5: Photographing and Printing the Cosmos

The middle and bottom shelves of case 5 display documents, images, and objects related to the early astrophotographic work of the Lick Observatory. How can we obtain "objective" representations of a galaxy or a nebula? How was Lick astronomers' idea of objective representation negotiated through aesthetic concerns? How is our idea of the reality of the cosmos--then, as now--a matter of aesthetic expectations created by certain standards and conventions of cosmic representation? Click the above link to read more.

The two primary telescopes at the Lick Observatory--the 36" Great Lick refractor and the 36" Crossley reflector--were designed for photographic purposes. While astronomers at the Lick spent much of their time studying the planets and their satellites, discovering many planetary satellites in the process, they were particularly concerned with using the telescopes to discover and photograph objects that are not visible to the naked eye, like nebulae and galaxies. In fact, many of these objects could not be seen through the telescope, only becoming visible through the long exposures produced by the telescope's camera. At the time, any distant, large grouping of stars was referred to as a "nebula"; many of these objects are now identified as galaxies.

It's important to note that many of the astronomers working at the Lick did not become scientists through education but rather through trade; they often did not have formal education in astronomy or optics. For instance, staff astronomer Edward Barnard, who created many of the Lick's most iconic images, did not have a university education in astronomy; his background in photography led him to the study of astronomy. Like Barnard, many of the staff astronomers at the Lick were trying to master astronomical knowledge while also trying to keep up with and improve optic and photographic technologies.

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 3: In Relation to Nature.

Most of the images produced at the Lick were recorded on glass plates as 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, or that they had been affected by condensation. We have in this archive only a few of the thousands of images created by Lick astronomers, as many were rejected.

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, which was then coated in ink to produce a print. The creation of the copper plate positive was a long process which involved re-exposing the negative onto photosensitive materials that are thicker and more viscous than the chemicals used to create paper prints now, and then dipping the copper plate in a bath of acid in order to etch out the dark portions of the image to be coated in ink. Accordingly, the very materiality of these materials often interfered with the printers' attempts to carry the exact resolution and sharpness of the original image over to the copper plates and prints. 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 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. Their letters to the photogravure companies had many complaints--loss of light or structural detail, the lack of clarity and contrast, the "thinness," or lack of depth or "blackness," of the sky behind the object. Their complaints were often aesthetic in nature; and as researcher Alexander Pang has noted, they often invented new aesthetic discourse or concepts--like "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 bring out the faint structure of nebulae or thin lines within comet's tails, yet they then would worry that the prints were too retouched and therefore not truly objective pieces of data.

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.

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.

This page has paths:

Contents of this path:
4. Case 5: Illustrating the Cosmos The images on the top shelf of case 5 display a selection of astronomical illustrations from the Lick Observatory archives. Notably, the archives contain sketches and correspondence from famous astronomical illustrator Étienne Trouvelot. Did the ideas and images offered by artists like Trouvelot have an impact on the way astronomers at the Lick perceived the cosmos? Can astronomical illustrations count as factual data? When observing the cosmos, can objectivity be disentangled from aesthetic experience? Click the above link to read more about this topic.
5. Case 5: Photographing and Printing the Cosmos The middle and bottom shelves of case 5 display documents, images, and objects related to the early astrophotographic work of the Lick Observatory. How can we obtain "objective" representations of a galaxy or a nebula? How was Lick astronomers' idea of objective representation negotiated through aesthetic concerns? How is our idea of the reality of the cosmos--then, as now--a matter of aesthetic expectations created by certain standards and conventions of cosmic representation? Click the above link to read more.

Contents of this path:

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.
Perrine and the printers at the Photogravure and Color Company exchanged a series of letters regarding the difficulties of reproducing the glass negatives of nebulae created at the Lick. Printers used chemicals to "etch" the image of the original glass plate into copper plates. The etched portions were then filled with ink to create a print. Details of the original image were often lost in the process.
Perrine and the printers at the Photogravure and Color Company exchanged a series of letters regarding the difficulties of reproducing the glass negatives of nebulae created at the Lick. Printers used chemicals to "etch" the image of the original glass plate into copper plates. The etched portions were then filled with ink to create a print. Details of the original image were often lost in the process.