In 1610, Galileo turned his telescope toward the Heavens and revolutionized astronomy. Some 400-odd years later, the Hubble Space Telescope continues this proud tradition—whirling around Earth at about 17,000mph and making observations (1.3 million and counting) with such power and accuracy that, and I quote NASA, “it can see astronomical objects with an angular size of 0.05 arcseconds, which is like seeing a pair of fireflies in Tokyo—that are less than 10 feet apart—from Washington, D.C.”

Somewhere in between these two cornerstones in stellar exploration sits a man called Étienne Léopold Trouvelot who, using a primary telescope of 26 inches long (Hubble is 516 inches) created over 7000 astronomical illustrations, including an exquisite set of pastels, that marry art and science in a uniquely beguiling way (he was on the staff at Harvard College Observatory).

Using an ingenious technique (in which he projected and traced his observations onto gridded sketching paper), Trouvelot aimed to “reproduce upon paper the majestic beauty and radiance of the celestial objects.” He certainly succeeded.

But it’s The November Meteors that I find most compelling and exciting. Unlike the other works in this collection (published in 1882), it doesn’t depict a single object or phenomenon but rather plots the course of a number of shooting stars that Trouvelot observed over a period of five hours on November 13 and 14 in 1868. It’s a composite—a time-lapse artwork that gives us a front-row seat to the theater of the night sky. A mesmerizing, starry show that we never saw but won’t quickly forget.

— Poppy Simpson, Head of Content and Curation