When the Italian astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli (1835-1910) pointed his telescope at Mars during the favourable position of the red planet in 1877, he recognised fine lines: ‘Martian canals’. Schiaparelli's discovery triggered a veritable hype about Mars due to translation errors, combined with speculation about the existence of extraterrestrial life, which found great resonance in the popular culture of the late 19th century. The debate about the Martian canals which was conducted by scientists and amateur astronomers continued for several decades and was an important stimulus for the methodological development in the field of astronomy. The American Percival Lowell, for example, tried to use photography to prove that the Martian canals were real. Only at the beginning of the 20th century it was realised that the phenomena that Schiaparelli and many others believed they had seen were the effect of an optical illusion caused by the human eye's tendency to combine tiny dots into linear patterns.
Astronomical images. Technologies, practices and aesthetics (1870–1910)
Darstellung Schiaparellis von Achille Beltrame auf der Titelseite der Sonntagszeitung „La Domenica del Corriere“, 28. Oktober 1900The controversy over the Martian canals is not only a footnote to the history of science; it is an example of the interplay between newly emerging observation and measuring instruments, visualisation techniques and aesthetic conventions in astronomy and astrophysics in the late 19th century. The research project of art historian Dr Sara Romani aims to create such an ‘archaeology of astronomical vision’. It is based on the premise that the implementation of photography as scientific evidence was closely linked to neighbouring practices such as drawing, measuring and recording astronomical data.
The project centres on the work of Schiaparelli, who, as director of the ‘Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera’ in Milan, was one of the most respected astronomers of his time. Schiaparelli did not use photography, his medium of visualisation was drawing. Schiaparelli's eleven observing notebooks, which he wrote in the course of his observations of Mars between 1877 and 1900 and which contain countless calculations, diagrams and detailed sketches, reveal the entire process of astronomical knowledge production. Schiaparelli was also intensively interested in the printing techniques and aesthetic concerns associated with the reproduction and publication of the images. His correspondence with other scholars, amateurs and craftsmen such as the lithographer Ilario Sormano documents how they worked side by side adapting their knowledge to instruments, and conversely adapting their instruments to the production of knowledge in a circular exchange.
By uncovering the genesis of astronomical images, the project aims to determine the influence of new devices and practices on the visual experience and the visualisations based on it. The transformation of perception processes was not solely due to photography, but was also shaped by closely related innovations such as photogrammetry, spectroscopy and improved telescopes. By also including in the analysis images that have been materially lost and are only preserved in the form of concise verbal descriptions, Dr Romani's work contributes to the further methodological development of the history of photography. The results of her research will be published in articles in relevant journals on the theory and history of photography and will be included in a monograph.
Grant holder
Dr Sara Romani, Parma
Support
The Gerda Henkel Foundation supports the project by granting a research scholarship and covering travel and material costs.
This project was documented in spring 2024.