A Daily History of Holes, Dots, Lines, Science, History, Math, Physics, Art, the Unintentional Absurd, Architecture, Maps, Data Visualization, Blank and Missing Things, and so on. |1.6 million words, 7500 images, 4.9 million hits| Press & appearances in The Times, Le Figaro, Mensa, The Economist, The Guardian, Discovery News, Slate, Le Monde, Sci American Blogs, Le Pont, and many other places… 5000+ total posts since 2008.

A Good Astronomical Bull’s-Eye (ca. 1850)

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

I was looking through some of the astronomical prints here and came upon this lovely piece of frammento, a bit detached from its source.  I think it may be from Elijah Burritt’s astronomical atlas, but probably not. From what I can tell my guess for the source is the U.S., mid 19th century–or at least after 1846 when Urbain Le Vernier brought its mathematically-suspected existence into the world, and as we can see in the chart Neptune is clearly included in the realm of the planets.  In any event the image is very striking, and it does its job.  


Solar system a129

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories