Trouvelot's Victorian-Era Space Illustrations (PHOTOS)

Today's giant telescopes offer amazing views of distant worlds. But it doesn't take modern technology costing millions to capture the awesome beauty and mystery of the night sky.

Case in point: 19th-century French entomologist-turned-astronomer Etienne Leopold Trouvelot (1827-1895), who created more than 6,000 astronomical illustrations while working for the Harvard College observatory. The illustrations, which span from 1872 until his death in 1895, depict a wide range of objects, from his clean, minimalist Jupiter to his realistic lunar volcanos.

Keep clicking to see 10 of Trouvelot's most spectacular works, recently digitized by the New York Public Library. All captions via NYPL.

Comments

[Aldo Rodriguez]

10:26 AM on 01/17/2012

::raising an eyebrow:: "Fascinating!"

[lynx781]

12:56 AM on 01/14/2012

Had to look up mare humorum. LOL. Learned something new.

[fishnetdiver]

03:58 AM on 01/13/2012

Utterly fantabulous!
and that painting of Mars? mmmuuuAAHHH!

[SwiftJonathan]

12:37 AM on 01/13/2012

Amazing... some are actually pretty good approximations of reality. But Mars doesn't look anything like what they thought they saw in their telescopes. It's a great example of mirages, created by poor contrast images and the image processing taking place in the human brain.

[theEvilBender]

02:18 AM on 01/26/2012

That's what Mars looked like until they deployed their planet wide illusion projecting beam...

[labtestbunny]

09:52 PM on 02/01/2012

I thought we knocked that out with the lipid-detecting chiaroscuro pulse canon we're hiding under the polar ice . . . interesting. . .

[Air Vice Marshal Park]

10:52 PM on 01/12/2012

Interesting, especially considering that a lot of people at the time assumed that planets like Mars and Venus were inhabited and had cities.

[LMPE]

09:03 PM on 01/12/2012

good times

[SockMuppet1]

08:04 PM on 01/12/2012

Interesting that actual photographs from the Hubble are way more spectacular than any drawings or paintings could ever be....

[SwiftJonathan]

12:41 AM on 01/13/2012

Actual photographs from Hubble are usually taken in color bands important to science (which are different from human perception) and color processed and enhanced. Most objects wouldn't look like that, not even if we had Hubble sized eyes.

But then... are we interested in what the universe looks like to eyes adapted to living under a 5780K sun... or are we interested in what the universe really looks like... if one could actually see it the way it is? Science instruments are trying to see it the way it is.

[GhostOfFDR]

06:43 PM on 01/12/2012

I'd love to see the Mars, Moon and Jupiter ones alongside high res photos of a similar view. The white dot on the top of mars is probably the south pole and the dark features that extend south are probably Syrtis Major and the lava flows around Elysium Mons. That would make the light spot on the left Elysium Mons.

[SwiftJonathan]

12:55 AM on 01/13/2012

I think that among these images Mars and the Moon are the most "imaginative". I think he got the rest more or less right... but Mars, even in the largest telescope, looks awfully washed out compared to high resolution probe images. So they were filling in the blanks...

[Gas-Bag]

05:12 PM on 01/12/2012

The illustration of the meteor shower has some of the meteors reversing course and has one even making a sudden ninety degree turn, as to seemingly try to avoid impact. I expect to see this 'evidence' presented on the 'Ancient Aliens' television series very soon.

[RagdeSitum]

06:18 PM on 01/12/2012

To be fair, that meteor does exhibit non-ballistic motion. It probably bounced off the shields of the cloaked alien cruiser. ;-)

[SockMuppet1]

08:06 PM on 01/12/2012

Gotta be it....

[Peter Speight]

04:36 PM on 01/12/2012

Pretty cool and retro

[neighborhoodmole]

04:28 PM on 01/12/2012

I've seen all these except the zodiac light with naked eye or binoculars or small telescope (different comet, of course.) In today's light polluted world, few can see the faint zodiac light.

[Varys]

04:21 PM on 01/12/2012

Those are actually pretty good, for a second I wondered if they were a hoax. Yet, they really were painted in the 1800's.