'Exposure'

Astrophotography Gallery: Ten Pioneering Images

Overview

On January 7, 1839, members of the French Academies des Sciences were shown by Francois Arago products of an invention that would forever change the study of astronomy - photography.

The astonishingly precise pictures they saw were the work of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, a Romantic painter and printmaker most famous until then as the proprietor of the Diorama, a popular Parisian spectacle featuring theatrical painting and lighting effects.

Each daguerreotype (as Daguerre dubbed his invention) was a ‘one of a kind image on a highly polished, silver-plated sheet of copper. It was the Polaroid of the day.

Even Arago, the then director of the Observatoire de Paris, was reportedly surprised by a daguerreotype image of the moon (which has not survived).

Neither Daguerre's microscopic nor his telescopic daguerreotypes survive, for on March 8, 1839, the Diorama—and with it Daguerre's laboratory—burned to the ground, destroying the inventor's written records and the bulk of his early experimental works.

In fact, fewer than twenty-five securely attributed photographs by Daguerre survive—a mere handful of still life, Parisian views, and portraits from the dawn of photography.

 1.       1840: Moon; John William Draper

On March 23, 1840, after a number of unsuccessful attempts, John William Draper (1811-1882) reported, at a meeting of the New York Lyceum of Natural history, later to become the New York Academy of Sciences, that he had been successful in utilizing a 13cm Reflector Telescope and a small daguerreotype camera to photograph the Moon’s surface on one inch diameter plates with a twenty minute exposure.

This was the first successful photograph ever taken of an astronomical object.

2.       1845: Sun; Jean Foucault and Armand Fizeau

According to Francois Arago, a large number of daguerreotypes of the sun were obtained by Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau (1819-1896) and Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (1819-1868) at the Paris observatory. One of these photographs, taken on April 2, 1845, still survives and is shown below.

This is the earliest surving photograph ever taken of the Sun showing its spots as well.

3.       1851: Total Solar Eclipse; M. Berkowski

A  daguerreotype photograph of a total eclipse of the Sun from Kšnigsberg, Prussia was obtained by a Mr. M. Berkowski, recording the inner corona and several prominences on 28th July 1851.

This is the first photograph ever taken of a Total Eclipse of the Sun.

4.       1857: Mizar & Alcor; George Phillips Bond

In 1857 George Philips Bond (1825-1865), the son of William Cranch Bond) produced a wet collodion photographs of the double star Mizar (Zeta Uma) and Alcor (80 Uma) using the 15” (38 cm) ‘Great Harvard Refractor.

This was the first successful attempt at photographing a double star and more importantly its fainter companion.

5.       1880: M42 - 'Great Orion Nebula'; Henry Draper

On the 30^th September 1880 Henry Draper (1837-1882) photographed the Great Orion Nebula (M42) using his 11” Alvan Clark Refractor with an exposure of 57 minutes, from his Observatory at Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

This was the very first photograph ever taken of a Deep Sky Object.

In March 1881 he took an even better photograph of M42 with an exposure of 104 minutes, and a year later in March 1882 he produced a third photograph, extending the exposure of M42 to 137 minutes. 

6.       1886: Jupiter; Paul Henry and Prosper Henry

In the years 1885-86 the french astronomer brothers' Paul and Prosper Henry took a series of photographs of the planets, when they imaged Jupiter and Saturn.

These photographs were the first successful images ever taken of a Planet

Prior to this time others had tried including contemporary pioneers like Warren de La Rue, but failed; his images of 1857 were only ½ mm across, and were therefore barely visible! 

7.       1888: B33 ‘Horsehead’; Williamina Fleming

In 1888 Williamina Fleming  was to make a discovery which astrophotographers all around the world will thank her for (and curse her just as much!).

The dark nebula B33 was first noticed that year by her on photographic plate B2312 taken at the Harvard College Observatory. It was afterwards to become universally known as the ‘Horsehead’ Nebula.

Plate 2312 was taken with 90 minute exposure using the Harvard Observatory's 8” Bache Telescope at Arequipa in Peru. The plate covered an area of sky about 10 degrees square, of which the inner 7 degrees provides good definition.

This was the first ever photograph taken of the most iconic all astronomical objects – the famous ‘Horsehead’ Nebula.

8.       1892: Rho Ophiuchi Nebula; Edward Emerson Barnard

During the period 1892 to 1895 Edward Emerson Barnard began taking a series of wide field images using the Crocker Astrograph at Lick Observatory, Mount Hamilton California.

These included many famous clusters, galaxies and nebulae including, M45 (Pleiades), M42 (Great Orion), M8 (Lagoon Nebula), M31 (Great Andromeda Spiral) and the Rho Ophiuchi Nebula (IC 4604).

These images were the first truly widewield images ever taken, each inch on the photographic plate amounted to almost four full moons across.

9.       1899: M101; James Edward Keeler

The series of photographs taken by James Edward Keeler and Charles Dillon Perrine during the period 1898 to 1903 using the 36” Crossley Reflector firmly established the supremacy of large silvered mirrored telescopes over the large refractor for Deep Sky astrophotography.

These images included famous Messier objects like M13 (Great Hercules Cluster), M20 (Trifid Nebula), M42 (Great Orion Nebula) and M101 (featured here), as well as less well known objects such as NGC 4631 (Whale Galaxy), NGC 7023 (Iris Nebula) and NGC 1977 (Running Man Nebula).

10.     1900: Moon Atlas (1910); Moritz Loewy and Pierre Puiseux

In the period 1894 to 1910, Moritz Loewy (1833-1907) and Pierre-Henri Puiseux (1855-1928) obtain 6000 photographs, over 500 nights of the Moon using the 60 cm Paris observatory Coudé refractor.

These images were used to create the first detailed atlas of the Moon - L'Atlas Photographique de la Lune, which was edited by the Paris Observatory between the years 1896 to 1910.

History of Astrophotography

The condensed version:

1800; Thomas Wedgwood (1771-1805); produces "sun pictures" by placing opaque objects on leather treated with silver nitrate. The resulting images deteriorated rapidly."

1804; Thomas Wedgewood; in 2008 one of the major historians of early British photography, Dr Larry J Schaaf, has suggested at length that a surviving photogenic drawing of a leaf (attributed to William Fox Talbot) could in fact be by Thomas Wedgwood, and might date from 1804 or 1805. If this can be confirmed, then Wedgwood would be the true inventor of the standard photographic process and not Niepce, Fox Talbot or Daguerre.

1816; Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833) combines the camera obscura with photosensitive paper.

1825; Joseph Niepce; in 2002, an earlier surviving photograph which had been taken by Niépce was found in a French photograph collection. The photograph was found to have been taken in 1825, and it was an image of an engraving of a young boy leading a horse into a stable. The photograph itself later sold for 450,000 euros at an auction to the French National Library.

1826; Joseph Niépce produces the first permanent image (Heliograph) using a camera obscura and white bitumen. It shows a view out of a window over roof tops at Le Gras, France. Prior to 2002 it was thought to be the oldest surviving photograph.

1829; Joseph Niepce & Louis Daguerre; sign a ten year agreement to work in partnership developing their new recording medium.

1834; Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877); creates permanent (negative) images using paper soaked in silver chloride and fixed with a salt solution. Talbot created positive images by contact printing onto another sheet of paper. Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature, published in six instalments between 1844 and 1846 was the first book to be illustrated entirely with photographs.

1837; Louis Daguerre creates images on silver-plated copper, coated with silver iodide and "developed"" with warmed mercury (daguerreotype)."

1839; Louis Daguerre patents the daguerreotype. The daguerreotype process is released for general use in return for annual state pensions given to Daguerre and Isidore Niépce (Louis Daguerre’s son): 6000 and 4000 francs respectively.

1839; John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871); uses for the first time the term ‘Photography’ (meaning writing with light).

1839; Louis Daguerre; takes the first unsuccessful daguerreotype of the moon obtained by Daguerre (blurred image – long exposure).

1839; François Jean Dominique Arago (1786-1853); announces the daguerreotype process at the French Academy of Sciences (January, 7 and August, 19). Arago predicts the future use of the photographic technique in the fields of selenography, photometry and spectroscopy.

1840; John William Draper (1811-1882); obtains the first successful (correctly exposed) daguerreotype of the moon using a 13 cm reflector with a long focal length (20 min exposures).

1841; William Henry Fox Talbot patents his process under the name "calotype".

1842; Giovanni Majocchi obtains the first photograph of the partial phase of a solar eclipse on a daguerreotype on July 8th 1842, with a 2 min exposure.

1844; Armand Fizeau & Jean Foucault ; according to Francois Arago, a large number of daguerreotypes of the sun were obtained by Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau (1819-1896) and Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (1819-1868) at the Paris observatory. One of these photographs, taken on April 2, 1845, still survives.

1849; William Cranch Bond (1789-1859) and John Adams Whipple (1822-1891) obtain a series of lunar daguerreotypes with the 38 cm Harvard refractor (40 second exposures) during the period 1849 to 1852.

1850; John Whipple & William Bond; first photograph of a star (a Lyrae, Vega) obtained by John Adams Whipple and William Cranch Bond using the 38 cm Harvard refractor (daguerreotype, 100 second exposure) on the 17th July, 1850.

1851; Frederick Scott Archer (1813-1857), improves photographic resolution by spreading a mixture of collodion (nitrated cotton dissolved in ether and alcohol) and chemicals on sheets of glass. Wet plate collodion photography was much cheaper than daguerreotypes. The negative positive process permitted unlimited reproductions. The process was published but not patented.

1851; M Berkowski; obtains first daguerreotype of a total eclipse of the Sun obtained, recording the inner corona and several prominences on 28th July 1851.

1851; Angelo Secchi (1818-1878) records daguerreotypes of the partial phases of a solar eclipse with a 162 mm refractor of 2.5 m focal length.

1851; John Adams Whipple; On March 22nd 1851, William Cranch Bond recorded in his notebook: “Succeeded in Daguerreotyping Jupiter. Six plates were taken by Whipple and “could distinguish the two principal equatorial belts – Time about as long as the Moon required or not much longer’. This pre-dates the planetary images of the Henry Brothers (1885-6) by over 30 years.

1852; Warren de La Rue; first wet plate collodion images of the Moon obtained by Warren de la Rue (1815-1889) using a 33 cm reflector with 3.05 m focal length, on a mount without a clock drive.

1854;Joseph Bancroft Reade (1801-1870) uses a 60 cm reflector to photograph the sun (wet collodium). These images reveal the molten look of the solar photosphere.

1855; Warren de la Rue publishes A series of twelve photographs of the Moon.

1855; Alphonse Poitevin invents the Collotype Process. The collotype plate is made by coating a plate of glass or metal with a substrate composed of gelatin or other colloid and hardening it. Then it is coated with a thick coat of dichromated gelatine and dried carefully at a controlled temperature (a little over 50 degrees Celsius).

1856; Lewis Morris Rutherfurd (1816-1892) photographs the Moon and the Sun using an achromatic refractor of 285 mm aperture over a two year period from 1856 to 1858.

1857; George Philips Bond (1825-1865) (son of William Cranch Bond) produces wet collodion photographs of the double star Mizar (Zeta UMa) and Alcor (80 UMa) using the 38 cm Harvard refractor.

1857; Warren de la Rue obtains images of Jupiter and Saturn with a 33 cm reflector. The exposures (12 seconds for Jupiter and 60 seconds for Saturn) were unsuccessful. The planet images measured only 1/2 mm on the plate.

1858; Warren de la Rue tries to image comet Donati without success.

1858; William Usherwood a commercial photographer from Dorking, Surrey, records the comet Donati with a 7 seconds exposure.

1858; George Phillips Bond shows that the magnitude of stars could be derived from astronomical photographs, i.e. stellar photometry.

1858; Warren de la Rue obtains daily images of the Sun (weather permitting) using the Kew photoheliograph. A total of 2778 Sun photographs were obtained between the years 1862 and 1872.

1860; Warren de la Rue produces Wet Collodion photographs of the total eclipse of the Sun in Spain on July, 18 with the Kew photoheliograph, using 60 second exposures.

1861; Warren de la Rue mentions the possibility of conducting a photographic survey to obtain a Star Map of the whole sky.

1861; James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879);  demonstrates a colour photography system involving three black and white photographs, each taken through a red, green and blue filter. This process is the same used today by modern astrophotographers but now with specialised CCD cameras with electronic filter wheels containing LRGB filters.

1863; William Huggins (1824-1910) publishes a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society titled - 'On the lines in the Spectra of Some Fixed Stars'. This was followed by other papers on the spectra of various stars, which showed that each contained a selection of lines also visible in the Solar Spectrum.

1864; William Huggins recorded the spectra of NGC 6543 (Cat's Eye Nebula), a bright Planetary Nebula in Draco. Instead of a series of spectral lines he found only a single bright Emission line. He concluded that this was due to gas, thus proving that certain 'nebulae' were in fact gaseous and not made up of individual stars.

1864; Henry Draper (1837-1882) images the Moon using a 40 cm reflector built by himself during the period 1864 to 1865.

1865; Lewis Morris Rutherfurd (1816-1892) obtains excellent Moon images using a specially corrected photographic 290 mm lens

1871; Hermann Carl Vogel (1841-1907) obtains excellent photographs of the Sun using a 294 mm refractor equipped with an electrical shutter , using exposures of between 1/5000 to 1/8000s.

1871; Richard Leach Maddox (1816-1902), proposes the use of an emulsion of gelatin and silver bromide on a glass plate, the so called "dry plate" process.

1871; Lord (James Ludovic) Lindsay (1847–1913) photographs the total eclipse of the Sun on December, 12 at Baikul, Russia.

1871; Lewis Morris Rutherfurd records the solar molten appearance with some detail.

1872; Henry Draper photographs for the first time the spectrum of a star (Alpha Lyrae, Vega) using a 72 cm reflector and a quartz prism.

1873; Edward Walter Maunder (1851-1928) installs at the Greenwich observatory a photoheliograph to record the Sun on a daily basis. Maunder is best remembered for his study of sunspots and the solar magnetic cycle that led to his identification of the period from 1645 to 1715 known as the Maunder Minimum.

1874; Pierre Jules César Janssen (1824-1907) develops the photographic revolver to record the transit of the planet Venus across the face of the sun, on the 8th December 1874. This was the first webcam, with an impressive frame rate of 100 images per hour (for then anyway!).

1875; Henry Draper photographs the spectra of almost all the bright stars using a 29 cm lens and a quartz prism located close to the photographic plate.

1876; William Huggins uses the dry plate for the first time to record spectra. From 1876 to 1886, Huggins and Miller photograph the spectra of all the first and second magnitude stars (60 min exposures).

1876; Pierre Jules Janssen presents his first solar photographs to the French Academy of Sciences (10 to 70 cm diameter). These wet collodion images were obtained with a 150 mm refractor with exposures of 1/500 to 1/6000s. During 1877/1877 Jules Janssen obtains a high number of solar photographs showing the solar granulation (photosphere) for the first time.

1879; Andrew Ainslie Common (1841-1903) photographs Jupiter using his 91 cm reflector (5.30 m focal length). Using exposures of 1 second, the images were only 1 mm wide.

1879; Henry Draper; between the years 1879 to 1882- Henry Draper photographs the spectra of 50 stars.

1880; Henry Draper obtains the first photograph of the Orion nebula (M 42) on September, 30. Draper used a 28cm Alvan Clark refractor supported by an equatorial mount also built by Clark (57 min exposure). Draper obtains two other photographs of M 42 in March of 1881 and 14th March 1882 with longer exposure times of 104 minutes and 137 minutes respectively.

1881; Pierre Janssen; First successful image of a comet (Tebbutt 1881 III) obtained by Jules Janssen on June, 30. Janssen used a dry plate and an exposure of 30 min (50 cm f/3 instrument). The same comet was also imaged by H. Draper, A. Common and M. Huggins.

1882; David Gill (1843-1914), of Cape observatory, photographs the great comet of 1882 using a portrait lens of 63 mm aperture (f/4.5)

1882; William Huggins photographs of the spectrum of a nebula (M 42) for the first time (45 min exposure).

1882; Edward Charles Pickering (1846-1919) starts a program at the Harvard observatory using objective prisms. This setup enabled Pickering to obtain several spectra on a single plate.

1883; Andrew Ainslie Common photographs the Orion nebula using his 91 cm reflector on January 30. The 37 minute exposure reveals stars that were not detected visually, for the first time. On February 28, Common obtains a deeper image with an exposure of 60 minutes.

1885; Paul Henry & Prosper Henry; during the period 1885 to 1886- The Henry Brothers: Paul Henry (1848-1905) and Prosper Henry (1849-1903); photograph Jupiter and Saturn using the Paris observatory 33 cm refractor (3.43 m focal length). These were the first successful planetary images.

1885; Isaac Roberts; in the period 1885 to 1899- Isaacs Roberts (1829-1904) obtains a long series of photographs from 1885 to 1897 and publishes two volumes with these results (the first in 1893 and the second in 1899, both with the same title 'Photographs of Stars, Star Clusters and Nebulae'.

1887; William Edward Wilson; over a twenty two year long period, from 1887 to 1899- William Edward Wilson (1851-1908) records several deep-sky images at the Daramona observatory (Westmeath, Ireland). The Wilson photographs are practically unknown today.

1887; Amédée Mouchez (1821-1892) hosts the first meeting of the “Carte du Ciel” Project at the Paris observatory. Eighteen observatories agreed to cooperate and to adopt, as a standard design for a photographic telescope, the 33 cm refractor developed by the Henry brothers.

1888; William Henry Pickering (1858-1939) successfully photographs Mars using two refractors (38 cm and 32 cm aperture) at the Pic du Midi observatory in France.

1889; Edward Emerson Barnard; first of a long series of wide-field deep-sky astrophotographs were obtained by Edward Emerson Barnard (1857-1923). Lick Observatory, Crocker telescope, Willard 6” lens.

1890; Edward Singleton Holden (1846-1914) obtains high resolution images of the Moon using the 91 cm Lick Observatory refractor.

1894; Moritz Loewy & Pierre Puiseux ; In the period 1894 to 1910, Moritz Loewy (1833-1907) and Pierre-Henri Puiseux (1855-1928) obtain 6000 photographs, over 500 nights of the Moon using the 60 cm Paris observatory Coudé refractor. These images were used to create the first atlas of the Moon - L'Atlas Photographique de la Lune was edited by the Paris Observatory between the years 1896 to 1910.

1898; James E. Keeler (1857-1900) starts a photographic survey of nebulae at the Lick Observatory (Mount Hamilton, California). Keeler used the Common reflector (91 cm aperture) that was offered to the observatory by Edward Crossley (1841-1905).

1898; William Edward Wilson uses his cinematograph device to take a video of sunspots. It was capable of taking 100 photographs per hour. An early 'high speed' webcam.

1899;  Julius Scheiner (1858-1913) records the spectrum of the spiral Galalxy M 31 with an exposure of over 7 hours, proving that it was composed of individual stars.

1901; George Willis Ritchey (1864-1945) obtains a series of excellent photographs of nebulae using the Mount Wilson 60 cm reflector in the years 1901 to 1902.

1903; Pierre Janssen publishes his monumental photographic atlas of the sun - 'Atlas de Photographies Solaires'.

1903; William Henry Pickering publishes first ever Lunar Photographic Atlas.

1909; George Willis Ritchey records several star clusters and nebulae with the 1.52 m f/5 Mount Wilson reflector, with exposures of up to 11 hours obtained over several nights. These photographs had a resolution of about one arc second.

1911; Edward Emerson Barnard obtains excellent images of Saturn using the 1.52 metre Mount Wilson reflector.

1913; Edward Emerson Barnard publishes Photographs of the Milky Way and of Comets, in Publications of Lick Observatory, Vol.11. These images were obtained from 1892 to 1895 using the Crocker telescope.

1918; Francis Gladheim Pease (1881-1938); first photographs of nebulae obtained with the new Hooker 100"" (2.54 m reflector) at Mount Wilson.

1924; Edwin Hubble (1889-1953), using the 2.54 m Hooker Telescope, was able to identify Cepheid variables in the Andromeda galaxy and estimates it’s distance (800 000 light years). Hubble changed our understanding of the nature of the universe by demonstrating the existence of other galaxies besides our own.

1927; Edward Emerson Barnard; Publication of Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way”, four years after the death of Barnard. Most of the plates included in the Atlas (40 out of 50) were obtained at Mount Wilson observatory with the Bruce Telescope.

1929; Edwin Hubble, based on photographs of spectra (exposures of tenths of hours), discovers that the amount of the redshift observed in several galaxies increases in proportion to their distance to the Milky Way. This became known as 'Hubble's' law, and would help establish that the universe is expanding."

1929; Marcel de Keroylr; from 1929 to 1934, the French astronomer Marcel de Kerolyr photographs nebulae and galaxies using the 80 cm f/6 reflector of the Paris observatory astrophysics station at Haute Provence.

1930; Bernhard Schmidt; in 1930 he built the first Schmidtspiegel (now known as the Schmidt camera). Astronomers had long dreamed of a camera which could take images of large areas of the sky without the distortion at the edges that current telescopes gave, and at the same time only required short exposure times.

1936; Milton Lasell Humason (1891-1972) images galaxies at 240 000 000 light-years with the Hooker telescope.

1948; Edwin Hubble uses the new 200 inch (5.08 m) Hale telescope for the first time at Mount Palomar, California.

1948; POSS - the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS) begins. It was not completed until 1958. The first plates were shot in November 1948 and the last in April 1958. This survey was performed using blue-sensitive (Kodak 103a-O) and red-sensitive (Kodak 103a-E) photographic plates on the 48 inch (1.22 m) Samuel Oschin Schmidt telescope.

1990; Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was launched on the 24th April 1990. It is named after the American astronomer Edwin Hubble. Although not the first space telescope, the Hubble is one of the largest and most versatile, and is well-known as both a vital research tool and a public relations boon for astronomy.