Partial Eclipse of the Moon
Medium: Albumen print from wet plate negative
Mount: on original mount
Photo Date: 1865
Print Date: 1860s
Dimensions: 13-1/2 x 10 in. (343 x 254 mm)
Photo Country: United States
Photographer Country: United States (USA)
Photographer's and enlarger's blindstamp in bottom left coner of print. A wonderful image of the moon with some lightening at the edges, but centrally very good. The enlargement was printed by Alfred Brothers. Brothers was a member of the Manchester Photographic Society by 1856. He was born in 1826 and died in 1912 and was thought to be active in the 1850s-1860s. Trained as a lawyer, Rutherfurd abandoned his practice in 1849 to experiment with astrophysics and astronomical photography. Especially known for his lunar photographs, he made his first stereograph of the moon in the summer of 1858. In 1860, he «prepared a telescope with camera and instantaneous apparatus mounted equatorially, to send by the US Coast Survey to Labrador for the observation of the eclipse». Unable to accompany the expedition, Rutherfurd did photograph the eclipse from his home in New York. On March 6, 1865, he made a 1 1/2" negative of the moon which, through solar enlarging, resulted in a 16 x 20" print. His stereographs of the moon were marketed by several different publishers. He devised many instruments including a «micrometer for the measurement of astronomical photographs»; he donated his instruments to Columbia University.
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