Wednesday, January 14, 2015

1000 years of comets and meteors!

speaking of open access, i found this great site, the public domain review: a project of the open knowledge foundation.

on that site there is a collection called flowers of the sky which shows historic depictions of comets, meteors, and meteorites over almost a 1000 year period. very neat!  check out this link for all the original sources.

Augsburger Wunderzeichenbuch (The Book of Miracle), c. 1552

Augsburger Wunderzeichenbuch, (Comet mit einem grosen Schwantz), c. 1552

Augsburger Wunderzeichenbuch (Comet, 1500)

Image from A Popular Treatise on Comets (1861) by James C. Watson

Drawings of a meteorite falling in Ukraine in 1866, by Wilhelm Ritter von Haidinger
also a good bit of dirty space news in that above compilation!

Image from Flowers of the Sky (1879) by Richard A. Proctor

Plate XI from The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings (1881) 

Leonid Meteor Storm, as seen over North America on the night of November 12-13, 1833, from E. Weiß’s Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt (1888)

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