Ebook: "Photographs of Nebulae and Clusters ..." by Keeler 1898 - 1900

[MikeODay]

No doubt many of you already know about this but I came accross this free ebook and I thought some of you might be interested ...

 

 

The book has 188 pages and includes around 70 odd black and white images of nebulae and clusters captured in the few years at the end of the 1800s and early 1900s.

 

 

One example is plate 55, the Trifid Nebula

 

 

The ebook can be downloaded for free from :  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36470

 

[wimvb]

Thanks for sharing this link.

[Beulah]

Not bad for 1899...

[alacant]

Thanks for posting. Did they know that the spiral nebulae were galaxies in 1899?

[Stu]

Nice find Mike, downloaded. I recently bought four old astronomy books cheaply off eBay and it is fascinating to read about what was know back then, and how far we have come in such a short time.

 A quick google search say that Hubble published his work in 1929 establishing galaxies as separate, distant objects rather than nearby nebulae.

[Merlin66]

Amazing results when you consider the "dry plate" process only appeared in the 1880's, the early plates were very blue sensitive (panchromatic, red sensitive, film didn't come until 1902),

the "speed" would have been around ISO 5 (!) and the exposures were made on the SAME plate hour after hour.

Such were the days!

[SilverAstro]

On 8/27/2017 at 08:15, MikeODay said:

No doubt many of you already know about this but I came accross this free ebook and I thought some of you might be interested ...

The ebook can be downloaded for free from :  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36470

Oh ! nice find, I (nearly)missed this. Thank you.