Centuries of stars: The history of astronomical visualisation in and out of museum collections

Martin Bush

Museums Victoria / Collections & research / Journals / PRISM / PRISM Volume 1 / Centuries of stars: The history of astronomical visualisation in and out of museum collections
A large group of well-dressed people pose at the opening of the world’s very first opto-mechanical projection planetarium in 1923.
The world’s first opto-mechanical projection planetarium on the roof of the Zeiss company building in Jena, 1923. / Source: ZEISS Archive / Photo: ZEISS

Abstract

The projection planetarium is a remarkable tool for visualising astronomy. Yet it is only one in a long history of such technologies, including magic lantern slides and the devices of the stage astronomy tradition, such as the Eidouranion. The presences and absences of these technologies within institutional collections show surprising continuities in the history of astronomical communication. The visual turn in history has prompted us to look at these collections in new ways in order to recover these practices in a manner that can illuminate contemporary interests. In this article I reflect upon the centuries-long history of astronomical visualisation and my personal intersections with it as a scholar and science communicator.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.24199/PENE7763

Citation

Bush, M. (2025). Centuries of stars: The history of astronomical visualisation in and out of museum collections. PRISM, 1, 37–47. https://doi.org/10.24199/PENE7763

Gallery

The Great Melbourne Telescope in 1869, pointing into the sky while a well-dressed operator stands in the foreground. The Crab Nebula in a photo taken by the Hubble Telescope, with the bright green, red and blue colours of the nebula visible amongst the stars. An illustrated page spread showing an eclipse of the moon as it orbits around the sun and earth, taken from Alexander Keith Johnston’s ‘Atlas of Astronomy’.

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