Plates from The Moon, Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite

by James Nasmyth, C.E. and James Carpenter, F.R.A.S.
Published in 1885.

For this book, Nasmyth and Carpenter wanted to include images of the moon as it appears in a high powered telescope. But photography wasn't sufficiently advanced in 1885 to shoot telescopic lunar photos. So instead, they sculpted detailed 3D models of the areas they wanted to show, and then photographed them under appropriate lighting conditions. Some of the photos (e.g. Gassendi) aren't reproduced as well as others.

I've scanned all the plates of lunar features except Copernicus from a copy in the San Jose Public Library. Sadly, the SJ library edition is missing the plate of Copernicus. You can see a scan of Copernicus at Collections Online or at atschool.eduweb.co.uk.


Creative Commons License All photos are copyright Akkana Peck,
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-SA).
Please inquire if you're interested in commercial use.

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