The Planet Mars

Mars at five minutes to midnight, September 3, 1877.

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

Plate VIIIas observed September 3, 1877, 11.55 p.m.

Format

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

Size

$29.00

The story

Plate VIII of The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1881, observed by Étienne Léopold Trouvelot on September 3, 1877, at five minutes to midnight. Scribner's printed a manual to go with the portfolio in 1882, and page 64 of it describes the features he drew here. Trouvelot had left France after Louis-Napoleon's coup of 1851, settled at 27 Myrtle Street in Medford, Massachusetts, and joined the Harvard College Observatory in 1872 on the strength of his drawings. Mars has since returned the favour: a crater on the planet carries the name Trouvelot. This is the red world as it looked long before any craft went near it.

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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