The Aurora Borealis

The northern lights at 9.25 on a March night in 1872.

Chart: The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings
Plate: Plate IV
Astronomer: Étienne Léopold Trouvelot
Date: 1881
Held by: New York Public Library · via Wikimedia Commons

Plate IVas observed March 1, 1872, 9.25 p.m.

Format

The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

Plate IV of The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1881, a chromolithograph from Étienne Léopold Trouvelot's pastel. He watched this aurora on March 1, 1872, at 9.25 in the evening. Auroras had started it all. His interest in astronomy is said to have been roused in 1870, when he saw several of them, and in 1872 Joseph Winlock, director of the Harvard College Observatory, saw his drawings and asked him onto the staff. An aurora is charged particles from the Sun striking the upper air, oxygen and nitrogen giving back green, red and purple light in curtains and rays. This is the sight that made him an astronomer.

See it on your wall

A window onto the heavens, in your home

The Aurora Borealis printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

About this reproduction

A faithful reproduction of a public-domain chart held by New York Public Library · via Wikimedia Commons — the work is centuries out of copyright.
Printed to order on EMA matte art paper, 200gsm. Framed pieces sit in a box frame under acrylic, with no mount (gold-ink editions on specialist press).
Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our charts cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans in existence, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the gold figures, the tiny stars, the cartouches — on a matte sheet that shows every line without glare.

From the same astronomer