Part of the Milky Way

Three years of nights on one stretch of the Milky Way.

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

Plate XIIIfrom a study made 1874 to 1876

Format

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

Size

$29.00

The story

Plate XIII of The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1881. Étienne Léopold Trouvelot made the study across three years, 1874, 1875 and 1876, on one stretch of the sky. The Milky Way is our own galaxy seen from inside: a hazy band of stars so far off that the naked eye cannot pull them apart. Galileo first resolved it into single stars with his telescope in 1610. Until the early 1920s most astronomers believed it held every star in the universe, and that was still the view when this plate was printed. Here it is as Trouvelot knew it: the whole of creation in a single band.

See it on your wall

A window onto the heavens, in your home

Part of the Milky Way printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

Part of the Milky Way framed on the wall

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