January 21, 2012
French Moon
image from Chuck Wood
This was LPOD 8 years and one day ago. After a Google search it is disappointing that a better version of this forgotten map is still not available.
Classical studies of the Moon from the late 1700s and 1800s were most famously done in Germany (Schroter, Lohrmann, Beer and Madler and Schmidt (who did much work in Athens). From 1876 (Neison and then Elger and Goodacre) to 1955 (Wilkins and Moore), England was the center of lunar mapping. What about other nations? Through the inspiration of famed astronomy popularizer Camille Flammarion (1842-1925), French lunar studies spread to Delmotte, Lamech and culminated in Liscardy's massive Atlas-Guide de la Lune. Flammarion was the David Levy of his day - a tireless observer and passionate advocate for astronomy. This chart of the Moon (drawn by Lecouturier and Chapuis) appeared in the 1881 edition of Flammarion's book Astronomie Populaire. The map shows a certain flamboyant simplicity and Italian influence (spaghetti-like rays from Tycho)!
Chuck Wood
Related Links:
L'observatoire de C. Flammarion (in French)
Flammarion (in English)
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