Intro
Prehistory
Ancient
1600s
1700s
1800s
1900-1960
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
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1603: W Gilbert: Only known pre-telescopic drawing of the Moon which shows anything other than vague shadings.
1609: T Harriot: First telescopic (6 power) map of the Moon.
1610:
Galileo Galilei: Sidereus
Nuncius .(The Starry Messenger) - The first published
drawings of the Moon as seen through a telescope. The drawings are
dramatic and relatively poor, but the description of mountains (and
measures of their heights) and craters revealed that the Moon was not
a perfect sphere as naively believed.
1614: P Scheiner: Disquisitiones Mathematicae de controversiis et novitatibus astronomicis. Contains a drawing of first quarter Moon showing seas but virtually no craters.
1636: Mellan: Very good engraving of second quarter Moon, with hundreds of identifiable features- the first good image of the Moon, drawn by an artist.
1645: MF Langrenus: Selenographia, sive Lumina austriaca-philippica, Paris. - First nomenclature for craters and seas, but the only name that survives is his own for a crater near the Moon's eastern limb.
1645: PAS Rheita: By misfortune his stylized and less informative map was published the same year as Langrenus's map. He emphasized mountains surrounding seas and Tycho's rays.
1646:
Fontana: A poor, measly-looking map
with stylized representations of small equal sized craters.
1647: Hevelius: Selenographia, Gdansk- The first reasonable accurate chart and description of the Moon, but with a nomenclature scheme that has been forgotten. Wilkins and Moore (1955) report that the copperplate used to print his map was made into a teapot! How fleeting is fame.
1649: E Divini: In many respects nothing more than a poor copy of the chart of Hevelius.
1651: GB Riccioli: Almagestum Novum, Bologna - Based on his friend Grimaldi's observations, Riccioli's map established the present system of lunar names.
1662: G Montanari: First map to pay attention to the many craters in the southern highlands.
1665: Robert Hooke (1635-1703) was probably the earliest scientist to experimentally model the formation of lunar craters. In his 1665 book, Micrographia, the Englishman Hooke described experiments in which he dropped bullets into wet clay. He noted that the muddy splash crater so produced looked like features on the Moon, but he doubted that lunar craters formed in this manner because, "...it would be difficult to imagine whence those bodies [the projectiles] should come; and next, how the substance of the Moon should be so soft." Hooke also made "volcanic" craters by cooling boiled plaster of paris which preserved the bubbles. Ref: Bevan M. French (1977) The Moon Book. Penguin, p 57.
1680: Cassini: The best map of the 17th century; very detailed and three-dimensional representation. Perhaps the most attractive map of the Moon ever!
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