New Exhibit Celebrates 400 Years of Lunar Images

A fascinating new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York delves into four centuries of lunar depictions. The images, writes Vicki Goldberg of the NY Times, "shine a bright light on astronomers’ unstoppable pursuit of knowledge as well as on technological advances, artistic responses and fantasy."

Included is Johannes Hevelius's Selenography, an atlas from 1647, James Nasmyth's fabricated plaster casts of the lunar surface from 1847, and John William Draper's hypnotic 1840 daguerreotype taken with a 30-minute exposure time and featuring a halo around the moon caused by the sun's rays. More here.