Nebuleuse de la Lyre

Paul Henry|Prosper Henry

ca. 1885 · Albumen silver print from glass negative · Photographs

Astronomers at the Paris Observatory, brothers Paul and Prosper Henry inherited in 1872 a project begun twenty years earlier--the mapping of the heavens by means of painstaking observation, calculation, and notation. When their survey approached the Milky Way, the brothers found that the galaxy proved too dense and complex to chart by eye. They solved the problem by constructing a photographic telescope with an extraordinarily precise mechanism for tracking the stars across the night sky during exposures as long as one hour. This photograph of the Ring Nebula in the constellation Lyra shows but a three-degree section of the firmament, 1,956 light-years from earth. Once a star similar to our own sun, the nebula was formed when the star exploded, releasing gasses from its outer shell into space.

Artist

Paul Henry|Prosper Henry

Date

ca. 1885

Medium

Albumen silver print from glass negative

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gift of Arnold H. Crane, by exchange, and Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1993