Eric Lesdema

Drowning The Moon

John Nasmyth - RL Gregory - Nasymth's Moon

Drowning the Moon: a series of Ant-Optical Artworks & a 48 page artist book with an extended 48 page footnote, The Long S.

Extract (page 40)

“Bernard E Jones, Cyclopedia of Photography (Edition nineteen eleven)

Pçyhography: “The photographing of images retained in the retina of the human eye. Many experiments have been made – notably those by W.Ingles Rogers, in eighteen ninety-six – in this particular direction. The method, in brief, is to gaze steadily at some bright object say a shilling in a good light, and then to enter the darkroom and gaze for about three quarters of an hour on an exposed dry plate, whereon, it is claimed, a faint image of the shilling will appear on development. Whatever may be thought of the method, it quite a simple matter for any photographer to put to the test.”

Extract (Nasmyth’s Moon RL Gregory)

“It is possible to improve photographs by selecting the best moments and combining them, while rejecting disturbed or otherwise inferior pictures. This can be done by human judgement or, far quicker, electronically. The power of such Lucky Imaging has been realised recently in astronomy (first by amateurs then belatedly by professionals) to produce pictures from large earth-based telescopes with even higher resolution than the wonderful Hubble orbiting space telescope.

The idea of building up astronomical images by sampling goes back to the Victorian engineer and inventor James Nasmyth (1808-1890), famous for inventing the steam hammer. He used his skill in drawing for thinking (Nasmyth & Smiles, 1883). His father was the Edinburgh landscape and portrait painter Alexander Nasmyth (1758-1884). Retiring from his Manchester firm in 1856, at the age of 48, Charles moved to Kent and built a unique 20” reÅecting telescope designed for lengthy nightly sessions studying the moon. Just before photography was fully adequate, he made Plasterof-Paris models of lunar craters, selecting moments of best ‘seeing’ and adding details over many years of observing. By selecting the best moments, he was able to build models better than any individual perceptions. Further, he could photograph his models (easier at that time than photographing the moon directly through the telescope), and he could light the models to match various lunar conditions.”