98
Huggins described them, or should they simply be called “granules,” following the
Reverend William Rutter Dawes?
21
What was at issue here is far more than terminology: behind these competing
“descriptive labels” were mutually exclusive options on how best to see a new feature, i.e., which Gestalt to assimilate to their visual impressions. An inspection of
the various published drawings of these surface features, drawn between 1862 and
1865 (see, for instance, Fig. 5.9), clearly reveals how suggestive these metaphorical
comparisons were to observers and their woodcutters and engravers. The associated
visual interpretations swayed beyond sensory data, from seeing something to seeing
as something—as grains of rice, willow leaves, etc.
In the winter of 1865, right at the height of the debate about the proper conceptualization of these peculiar surface features, James Nasmyth visited the observatory at the Collegio Romano and surprised its director Secchi in the act of producing
a “representation” of Nasmyth’s willow-leaf-shaped constituents of the solar surface. Nasmyth recounts in his Autobiography how Secchi was about to make his
own, three-dimensional representation of Nasmyth’s willow-leaf-shaped constituents of the solar surface:
“He (Secchi) then pointed to a large black board, which he had daubed over with glue, and
was sprinkling over (when we came in) with rice grains. “That”, said he, “is what I feel to
be a most excellent representation of your discovery as I see it, verified by the aid of my
telescope”.
It appeared to Father Secchi so singular a circumstance that I should come upon him in
this sudden manner, while he was for the first time engaged in representing what I had (on
the spur of the moment when first seeing them) described as willow-leaf shaped objects. I
thought that his representation of them, by scattering rice grains over his glue-covered black
board, was apt and admirable; and so did Otto Struve”.
22
For Secchi, a two-dimensional depiction of what was viewed appeared not to be
enough—like Nasmyth and William B. Carpenter with respect to the Moon, Secchi
also sought a three-dimensional “likeness.”
23
His hand-drawn image of a large sunspot and its surroundings (Fig. 5.6), as well as the anecdote about his sprinkling
grains of rice onto a gluey surface, reveals the visual metaphor for granulation that
Secchi evidently preferred.
Secchi himself seems to have been only a passable draughtsman, but some of his
assistants and contracted illustrators as well as his colleague Tacchini were excellent draughtsmen. They also exercised this art in illustrations of comets and lunar
craters, most famously in Secchi’s exact map of the lunar crater Copernicus
(Fig. 5.10), as an enlarged detail of a photograph from his early Moon photographic
atlas (see Sheehan and McKim, Chap. 6, in this volume).
21 See Nasmyth 1862a,b, 1883: 382ff., and the texts in the preceding footnote.
22 Quote from Nasmyth and Smiles 1883: 391; see Hentschel 1999: 23–25 and 2014: section 13.1
on later photographs of solar granulation.
23 On the Victorian distinction between instrumentalized, conventional “model” and “likeness”
(aiming at verisimilitude), see FitzGerald 1902 and Kargon 1969.
K. Hentschel
Huggins described them, or should they simply be called “granules,” following the
Reverend William Rutter Dawes?
21
What was at issue here is far more than terminology: behind these competing
“descriptive labels” were mutually exclusive options on how best to see a new feature, i.e., which Gestalt to assimilate to their visual impressions. An inspection of
the various published drawings of these surface features, drawn between 1862 and
1865 (see, for instance, Fig. 5.9), clearly reveals how suggestive these metaphorical
comparisons were to observers and their woodcutters and engravers. The associated
visual interpretations swayed beyond sensory data, from seeing something to seeing
as something—as grains of rice, willow leaves, etc.
In the winter of 1865, right at the height of the debate about the proper conceptualization of these peculiar surface features, James Nasmyth visited the observatory at the Collegio Romano and surprised its director Secchi in the act of producing
a “representation” of Nasmyth’s willow-leaf-shaped constituents of the solar surface. Nasmyth recounts in his Autobiography how Secchi was about to make his
own, three-dimensional representation of Nasmyth’s willow-leaf-shaped constituents of the solar surface:
“He (Secchi) then pointed to a large black board, which he had daubed over with glue, and
was sprinkling over (when we came in) with rice grains. “That”, said he, “is what I feel to
be a most excellent representation of your discovery as I see it, verified by the aid of my
telescope”.
It appeared to Father Secchi so singular a circumstance that I should come upon him in
this sudden manner, while he was for the first time engaged in representing what I had (on
the spur of the moment when first seeing them) described as willow-leaf shaped objects. I
thought that his representation of them, by scattering rice grains over his glue-covered black
board, was apt and admirable; and so did Otto Struve”.
22
For Secchi, a two-dimensional depiction of what was viewed appeared not to be
enough—like Nasmyth and William B. Carpenter with respect to the Moon, Secchi
also sought a three-dimensional “likeness.”
23
His hand-drawn image of a large sunspot and its surroundings (Fig. 5.6), as well as the anecdote about his sprinkling
grains of rice onto a gluey surface, reveals the visual metaphor for granulation that
Secchi evidently preferred.
Secchi himself seems to have been only a passable draughtsman, but some of his
assistants and contracted illustrators as well as his colleague Tacchini were excellent draughtsmen. They also exercised this art in illustrations of comets and lunar
craters, most famously in Secchi’s exact map of the lunar crater Copernicus
(Fig. 5.10), as an enlarged detail of a photograph from his early Moon photographic
atlas (see Sheehan and McKim, Chap. 6, in this volume).
21 See Nasmyth 1862a,b, 1883: 382ff., and the texts in the preceding footnote.
22 Quote from Nasmyth and Smiles 1883: 391; see Hentschel 1999: 23–25 and 2014: section 13.1
on later photographs of solar granulation.
23 On the Victorian distinction between instrumentalized, conventional “model” and “likeness”
(aiming at verisimilitude), see FitzGerald 1902 and Kargon 1969.
K. Hentschel