Constructing the Heavens: Drawing the Nebulous in 19th Century Astronomy

With the arrival of new and powerful telescopes around the beginning of the nineteenthcentury came the development of sidereal astronomy, and thus a focused and increased interest in objects beyond our solar system. One of the central astronomical objects of this development was certainly the nebula. Many nineteenth-century astronomers spent much time, funds, energy and skill in understanding, observing and cataloging these nebulae. A conspicuously distinctive feature of this effort was the mass of drawings of nebulae that were produced. While looking through giant telescopes, hundreds of preliminary and preparatory sketches were made in observing books, from which many detailed drawings were made, sometimes with measurements and other times without. Selected figures were engraved and etched for publication in important scientific journals and astronomical catalogues. Some representative figures were further reproduced in popular works on astronomy. We are therefore confronted with an array of uses for these drawings: from the private everyday task of data gathering, to grand speculations related to the Nebular Hypothesis and the Plurality of Worlds thesis.

The project will examine the nature of these sketches and figures particularly in relation to the production of knowledge and the stabilization of ambiguous scientific objects. Particular emphasis is placed on the role played by the sketches as observational and research tools in the process of astronomical work done on nebulae. Much of the project's focus, therefore, will be dedicated to the day and night books, the ledgers and the catalogues that were all prepared at various stages of astronomical research and observation. It is in these sources that one finds and is thereby able to track the various layers, forms and processes of material development of the sketches of nebulae.