Abstract
In all of the history of science, before the opening of the twentieth century, we can point to only a handful of specific dates on which a significant scientific event occurred. One such date is January 7, 1839. François Arago, the permanent secretary of the Paris Académie des Sciences, announced that French artist and chemist Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1789–1851) had devised a process to capture latent images on chemically sensitive metal plates. Daguerre’s process used fumes of metallic mercury vapor to develop an image on a polished silvered copper plate. Using the mercury vapors as a developer was one of those scientific discoveries made completely by accident. Daguerre had left an exposed plate in a cupboard with a broken thermometer in it. A few days later he discovered that the latent image on the plate was developed. A process of elimination proved that vapors from the mercury in the thermometer had caused the development of the image. The process to capture the latent image on the metal plate required an exposure time of about 20 min under normal sunlight conditions.
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Notes
- 1.
Richard Proctor, The Moon (1878), 151. An actinic ray is a type of radiation that can cause a photochemical action.
- 2.
Jane Rohrschneider, “Samuel D. Humphrey, Journalist–Photographer: A New Perspective on His Contributions to American Photography.” The Daguerreian Annual 1997 (1998), 63–86.
- 3.
George P. Bond, “On the Light of the Moon and Planet Jupiter.” Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 8 (1) (1861), 221–286.
- 4.
I have seen many permutations in the literature of upper and lower case D and L in his name. According to David LeConte in his extensive biography article, Mr. De La Rue always signed his name with capital D and L. I have followed that convention.
- 5.
Edward Ball Knobel, “Obituary of Warren de la Rue.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 50 (4) (February 1890), 158, 159.
- 6.
Figure 5.5 is one of three lunar photographs in a portfolio produced by Rutherfurd and Richard Proctor in 1873.
- 7.
“Obituary of Lewis Morris Rutherfurd.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 53 (4) (February 1893), 231. When I checked in 1999, to see if I could acquire a copy of one of Rutherfurd’s lunar photographs from the Columbia University Observatory, the archivists could locate only 6 poster-size reprints of the Moon and several unidentified stellar photographs. The original lunar photographic work that Rutherfurd donated to the college appears to be lost at this time. Hopefully his work is only misplaced. Later I was able to purchase a portfolio of 3 of his images.
- 8.
There are almost identical versions of this book. The first was published in 1902 with a copyright by The Century Company (New York), in 1903 and 1904 by Doubleday, Page and Company (New York), and again in 1904 by John Murray (London). The 1904 Murray version has a slightly different subtitle: A Summary of the Recent Advances in our Knowledge of our Satellite, with a Complete Photographic Atlas.
- 9.
William H. Pickering, “A Photographic Atlas of the Moon,” Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College 51 (1903), 203.
- 10.
Throughout this book, I have endeavored to include a wide variety of lunar images, from the first lunar daguerreotypes to the most modern electronic imaging.
- 11.
In late 2004, Eastman Kodak announced that it would no longer be manufacturing Technical Pan 2415, and in 2009 they ceased the production of Kodachrome color film as well. In January 2012, the company filed for bankruptcy and exited the proceedings in September 2013, as a commercial-printing company and no longer makes consumer photographic products.
- 12.
Except for items that are specific to film, these items to be recorded also apply to digital work.
- 13.
Jean Dragesco, High Resolution Astrophotography (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995), 45–49.
- 14.
Communication between Laurie Hatch and the author on February 16, 2014.
- 15.
In the 1970s on LTO-82A1, Donald Menzel tried to rename the cone crater Hume Z “Li Po,” centered at (lat 03.50°S, long 90.60°E), to honor the great Chinese poet, but the IAU did not adopt this name for a feature on the Moon. In 1976, the IAU did adopt the name Li Po for a crater on Mercury, centered at (lat 17.07°S, long 35.74°W). This poem is considered to be one of the most famous in Chinese literature. The legend surrounding his death indicates that he drowned when in a state of drunkenness he fell out of a small boat while trying to capture the reflection of the glistening full moon on the surface of the Yangtze River.
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Garfinkle, R.A. (2020). Photographing the Moon. In: Luna Cognita. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1664-1_5
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