Trouvelot Note Cards Boxed Set

This boxed set of note cards contains the following twelve images:     Aurora Borealis.     The Planet Mars.     Group of Sun Spots and Veiled Spots.     The November Meteors.     The Great Comet of 1881.     Partial Eclipse of the Moon.     Solar Protuberances.     Mare Humorum.     The Great Nebula in Orion.     Total Eclipse of the Sun.     The Planet Jupiter.     The Zodiacal Light. The luminous illustrations on these note cards are reproduced from Étienne Léopold Trouvelot's original lithographs, a selection of which are on display at the Museum of Jurassic Technology as part of the exhibit, Scrupulous Fidelity: The Astrophysical Illustration of Étienne Léopold Trouvelot. The images are printed on lightly textured, archival-quality velvet fine art paper, and are hand-tipped into debossed note cards, which are printed on the back with Trouvelot's biographical information. Each comes with a matching envelope and the set of twelve cards is packaged in a kraft box with a transparent lid.  *** In the early 1870’s, after his well-known if unfortunate efforts in the cultivation of moth caterpillars, Étienne Léopold Trouvelot turned his formidable talents and undauntable curiosity from entomology to astronomy with a series of aurora illustrations. Not unnoticed in the highest of circles, Trouvelot was soon asked to join the staff of the Harvard College Observatory. Surveying the heavens through the Observatory’s 15-inch Great Refractor, Trouvelot produced hundreds of illustrations for the Astronomical Engravings from the Observatory of Harvard College. Over the subsequent years, Trouvelot worked on some 7,000 drawings at various observatories. By 1881 he had selected his best work and contracted Charles Scribner’s Sons to produce a set of chromolithographs from which the images in this exhibition were made. Wary of the rapid ascension of astrophotography, Trouvelot noted in his final years, “A well trained eye alone is capable of seizing the delicate details of structure and configuration of the heavenly bodies, which are liable to be affected, and even rendered invisible, by the slightest changes in our atmosphere.”