On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Photographic Atlas of the Moon, Published by the Paris Observatory (Atlas Photographique de la lune, publié par l'Observatoire de Paris)
Not on view
A capstone of nineteenth-century astronomical photography, Maurice Loewy and Pierre Puiseux’s Photographic Atlas of the Moon would remain the most detailed and comprehensive set of lunar maps until the era of space travel. Beginning in 1894, the astronomers spent every clear night photographing the moon through the Paris Observatory’s powerful refractor telescope, the Grand Equatorial Coudé. The instrument was equipped with a clockwork mechanism adjustable to 3,600 speeds, a necessity for tracking the moon’s variable movements.
Over the course of fourteen years, the partners produced more than six thousand dry-plate glass negatives, choosing only the best for publication. The negatives were enlarged and transferred to etching plates to create photogravures of unprecedented clarity and size. Issued in twelve installments, the seventy-one plates came overlaid with tissue sheets that delineated the moon’s topographical features.
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