Plate of the eight-day old moon, 1893

Lick's first director, Edward S. Holden, undertook an exhaustive program of lunar photography with the 36-inch refractor. Many of the pictures were visually stunning, but some members of the staff—a few of whom found his rule autocratic and his scientific accomplishments meager—felt that the program took time away from more compelling projects, and joked that Holden had "discovered the moon." Nevertheless, selenography—the study of the moon—was an active field, and the pictures had wide public appeal, showing off the new telescope to good advantage.

Holden's images were widely circulated in the U.S. and Europe. They were used by the Hungarian selenographer Ladislaus Weinek as part of the first atlas of the moon based on photography. The German observer, Johann Nepomuk Krieger, used them in conjunction with his telescope to produce a beautiful atlas of drawings (left). Learn more.

Lick Historical Collections, photographic plate archive.