Autolycus
Date
1856
Creator
Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819 - 1900, British) , Astronomer
Object type
Archive reference number
Material
Subject
Description
View of a crater on the surface of the moon as observed through a telescope from the peak of Mount Teide, Tenerife.
Inscribed in ink above: 'Scale of Seconds of space.
Scale of English miles.'
Inscribed in ink underneath: 'Alta Vista Station
Approximate Drawing of Autolychus, in the Moon magnifying power 260 September 6th 1856'.
The 'Alta Vista Station' was the name of the camp erected at the peak of Mount Teide by Charles Piazzi Smyth and his party during their 1856 astronomical expedition to this volcanic mountain range.
From the 'Tenerife Papers of Charles Piazzi Smyth', a scrapbook of watercolours and stereographs documenting this expedition.
This particular watercolour features as the top half of plate XXXIV in Smyth's paper 'Astronomical experiment on the peak of teneriffe, carried out under the sanction of the lords commissioners of the admiralty', published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 148, 1858.
Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900) Italian Astronomer was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1857, but resigned in 1874.
Inscribed in ink above: 'Scale of Seconds of space.
Scale of English miles.'
Inscribed in ink underneath: 'Alta Vista Station
Approximate Drawing of Autolychus, in the Moon magnifying power 260 September 6th 1856'.
The 'Alta Vista Station' was the name of the camp erected at the peak of Mount Teide by Charles Piazzi Smyth and his party during their 1856 astronomical expedition to this volcanic mountain range.
From the 'Tenerife Papers of Charles Piazzi Smyth', a scrapbook of watercolours and stereographs documenting this expedition.
This particular watercolour features as the top half of plate XXXIV in Smyth's paper 'Astronomical experiment on the peak of teneriffe, carried out under the sanction of the lords commissioners of the admiralty', published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 148, 1858.
Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900) Italian Astronomer was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1857, but resigned in 1874.
Object history
Donated to the Royal Society by Charles Piazzi Smyth, 1857.
Associated place