Lunar Crater Models: Tools of Persuasion, Popularization and Shared Knowledge
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Louise E. Devoy [1]
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[1] Royal Museums Greenwich (London, UK)
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- Localización: Nuncius: annali di storia della scienza, ISSN 0394-7394, Vol. 35, Nº. 2 (Special Issue), 2020 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Section 1: Other Worlds within a Hand’s Reach; Section 2: Early Modern Geometries), págs. 300-332
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
This article traces the story of three amateur astronomers who created relief models to help them depict the changing illumination of certain lunar craters, examples of which can be found in UK museum collections today. English chemist Henry Blunt (1806–1853) adopted the emerging technology of electrotyping to reproduce and distribute his plaster model of the Eratosthenes crater to a wider audience. Scottish industrial engineer James Nasmyth (1808–1890) used a combination of drawing, modelling and photography to support his thesis on the volcanic origin of lunar craters in his popular book The Moon Considered … (1874). Spanish sculptor Dionis Renart (1878–1946) produced a series of plaster models for the Exposición General De Estudios Lunares (1912) that eventually came to Greenwich via the British selenographer Hugh Percy Wilkins (1896–1960). These three case studies provide us with valuable insights into the rationale behind the production, use and distribution of lunar crater models within amateur and popular astronomy.
