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The history of Astrophotography cannot be separated from that of General Photography, each helping to improve the processes and techniques of the other. The first real effort to create a permanent photographic image was carried out in the early years of the 19th century by Thomas Wedgewood, the youngest son of Josiah Wedgewood the famous potter. The earliest known permanent photograph was created in 1825 by Joseph Nicephore Niepce, a French Inventor which shows a young boy leading a horse into a stable. This was followed in 1835 by William Henry Fox Talbot who created the first permanent negative image of a window in his home at Laycock Abbey, England. From this negative image as many positive images as required can be created. In January 1839 Francois Arago announced the discovery of the Daguerreotype Process (a permanent image on a copper metal plate coated with silver) to the French National Academy of Sciences. This sparked the controversy between Daguerre and Fox Talbot as to who really invented photography. Recent evidence (2008) indicates that Thomas Wedgewood created a permanent photographic image as early as 1804-5. If true then it was he alone who had invented Photography and not Niepce, Daguerre or Fox Talbot. By 1840 the Daguerreotype had been introduced to the United States, and the chemicals used in the process were first manufactured there by John Adams Whipple. In that year John William Draper took the first successful photograph an astronomical object when he imaged the Moon. In the 1840s photographs of the Sun were obtained by Armand Fizeau and Jean Foucault at the Paris Observatory. A Total Solar Eclipse was photographed for the first time in 1851 by M. Berkowski of Dresden, Germany. On the 19th July 1850 John Adams Whipple and William Cranch Bond (the first Director of the Harvard College observatory) imaged a star – Vega, Alpha Lyrae. George Phillips Bond (the son of William Bond) followed this up in 1857 by taking images of fainter stars, and in that year obtained the first photograph of a Double star – Mizar (Zeta Ursa Majoris) and its companion Alcor. The ‘holy grail’ of Astrophotography was achieved on the 30th September 1880 when Henry Draper (son of William Draper) obtains the first ever successful image of a Deep Space Object, the ‘Great Orion’ Nebula, M42. From the 1880s onwards the likes of Andre Common, Isaac Roberts, Edward Barnard , James Keeler and George Ritchie began to take many more photographs of star clusters, nebulae and galaxies of ever increasing quality. It was not until 1885 that the first successful (extant) planetary photographs were obtained by the two brothers Paul and Prosper Henry. Although William Bond records in the reports of the Harvard College Observatory that John Adams Whipple took images of Jupiter as early as March 1851, tantalizingly neither the quality of these images or their whereabouts is known. In 1887 work began on the first ever Photographic Sky survey, the ill-fated Carte du Ciel Project. It was later abandoned as being over ambitious and was unable to provide machine readable data. The data from it was not entirely wasted when the Hipparcos astrometry satellite (launched in 1989) made valuable use of it determining the proper motions of 2.5 million stars. The introduction of commercially produced dry photographic plates in the 1880s and by the transparent emulsion photographic film in 1889 began to make photography accessible to all. Early photographic plates and films were sensitive to blue light only. Hermann Wilhelm Vogel discovered that the spectral sensitivity could be extended by dye sensitization. Orthochromatic film sensitive to the spectral range from green to blue was introduced in 1879 and was dominant until the mid-1920s, when panchromatic film sensitive to the entire visual spectrum became standard. All of these films were used to produce black-and-white images, regardless of spectral sensitivity. Experiments with colour photography were first made in 1861 by James Clerk Maxwell, but generally usable colour films only became available in the 1930s. After World War II, much progress was made, and colour became used for the overwhelming majority of photographs The introduction of digital CCD images in the 1990s has revolutionized astrophotography. It is now possible for an amateur with modest equipment to obtain photographs of far better quality than those taken by say the 200" Hale telescope back in the 1950s (and in colour too!). The launch of the Hubble Space telescope in 1990 has brought us such wonderful images that have inspired us to try emulating its achievements. Thomas Wedgwood  James Clerk Maxwell Spectrum of Procyon Inventor of Photography? Inventor of Colour Photography William Huggins (All Years) 1800 1804 1816 1825 1826 1829 1834 1837 1838 1839 1840 1841 1842 1845 1849 1850 1851 1852 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1860 1861 1863 1864 1865 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1885 1887 1888 1889 1890 1894 1898 1899 1901 1903 1909 1911 1913 1918 1924 1927 1929 1930 1936 1948 1990 (All Pioneers) Alphonse Poitevin Amedee Mouchez Andrew Ainslie Common Angelo Secchi Armand Fizeau & Jean Foucault Bernhard Schmidt David Gill Edward Charles Pickering Edward Emerson Barnard Edward Singleton Holden Edward Walter Maunder Edwin Hubble Francis Gladheim Pease François Arago Frederick Scott Archer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel G Majocchi George Phillips Bond George Willis Ritchey Henry Davis & Lord Lindsay Henry Draper Hermann Carl Vogel Hubble Space Telescope Isaac Roberts James Clerk Maxwell James Keeler John Adams Whipple John Herschel John Whipple & George Bond John William Draper Joseph Bancroft Reade Joseph Niepce Joseph Niepce & Louis Daguerre Julius Scheiner Lewis Morris Rutherfurd Louis Daguerre M Berkowski Marcel de Keroylr Milton Lasell Humason Moritz Loewy & Pierre Puiseux Paul Henry & Prosper Henry Pierre Janssen POSS Richard Leach Maddox Thomas Wedgwood Warren de La Rue William Bond & John Whipple William Edward Wilson William Henry Fox Talbot William Henry Pickering William Huggins William Usherwood (All Types) Astronomical Astrophotography Photography (All Events) Astronomical Spectroscopy Calotype Collotype Process Colour Photography Cometary Photographs Daguerreotype Deep Space Object Photographs Distance of Star Distances of Galaxies Double Star Photographs Dry Plate Process First Photographs Heliograph Lunar Photographic Atlas Lunar Photographs Negative/Positive Images Partial Eclipse Photographs Photographic Sky Survey Photography Planetary Photographs Solar Photographic Atlas Solar Photographs Star Photographs Stellar Photometry Total Eclipse Photographs Webcam Wet Collodion Process Date Name Type Event 1800 Thomas Wedgwood Photography Thomas Wedgwood (1771-1805) produces 'sun pictures' by placing opaque objects on leather treated with silver nitrate. The resulting images deteriorated rapidly. 1804 Thomas Wedgwood Photography In 2008 one of the major historians of early British photography, Dr Larry J Schaaf, has suggested at length that a surviving photogenic drawing of a leaf (attributed to William Fox Talbot) could in fact be by Thomas Wedgwood, and might date from 1804 or 1805. 1816 Joseph Niepce Photography Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833) combines the camera obscura with photosensitive paper. 1825 Joseph Niepce Photography In 2002, an earlier surviving photograph which had been taken by Niépce was found in a French photograph collection. The photograph was found to have been taken in 1825, and it was an image of an engraving of a young boy leading a horse into a stable. The photograph itself later sold for 450,000 Euros at an auction to the French National Library. 1826 Joseph Niepce Photography Joseph Niépce produces the first permanent image (Heliograph) using a camera obscura and white bitumen. It shows a view out of a window over roof tops at Le Gras, France. Prior to 2002 it was thought to be the oldest surviving photograph. 1829 Joseph Niepce & Louis Daguerre Photography Niépce and Louis Daguerre (1787-1851) sign a ten year agreement to work in partnership developing their new recording medium. 1834 William Henry Fox Talbot Photography Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) creates permanent (negative) images using paper soaked in silver chloride and fixed with a salt solution. Talbot created positive images by contact printing onto another sheet of paper. Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature, published in six installments between 1844 and 1846 was the first book to be illustrated entirely with photographs. 1837 Louis Daguerre Photography Louis Daguerre creates images on silver-plated copper, coated with silver iodide and 'developed' with warmed mercury. These images were the first example of the Daguerreotype, photographic process. 1838 Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Astronomical Determines the distance of the star 61 Cygni, by measuring its parallax. 1839 François Arago Astrophotography François Jean Dominique Arago (1786-1853) announces the Daguerreotype process at the French Academy of Sciences on the 7th of January 1839. Arago predicts the future use of the photographic technique in the fields of selenography, photometry and spectroscopy. 1839 John Herschel Photography John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871) uses for the first time the term Photography; which literally means writing with light. 1839 Louis Daguerre Astrophotography First unsuccessful daguerreotype of the moon obtained by Daguerre His image was blurred image and required a long exposure. 1839 Louis Daguerre Photography Louis Daguerre patents the Daguerreotype. The Daguerreotype process is released for general use in return for annual state pensions given to Daguerre and Isidore Niépce (Joseph Nicephore Niepce's son): 6000 and 4000 francs respectively. 1840 John William Draper Astrophotography John William Draper (1811-1882) obtains the first successful (correctly exposed) Daguerreotype of the moon using a 6-inch (13 cm) reflector with a long focal length and 20 minute exposure. 1841 William Henry Fox Talbot Photography William Henry Fox Talbot patents his process under the name Calotype. 1842 G Majocchi Astrophotography Austrian astronomer Gian Alessandro Majocchi obtains the first photograph of the partial phase of a solar eclipse on a Daguerreotype on the 8th of July 1842, with a 2 min exposure. 1845 Armand Fizeau & Jean Foucault Astrophotography According to Francois Arago, a large number of Daguerreotypes of the Sun were obtained by Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau (1819-1896) and Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (1819-1868) at the Paris Observatory. One of these photographs, taken on the 2nd of April 1845, still survives. 1849 William Bond & John Whipple Astrophotography William Cranch Bond (1789-1859) and John Adams Whipple (1822-1891) obtain a series of lunar daguerreotypes with the 15-inch (38 cm) Harvard refractor using 40 second exposures, during the period 1849 to 1852. 1850 John Whipple & George Bond Astrophotography First Daguerreotype photograph of a star - Vega (alpha Lyrae) is obtained by John Adams Whipple and George Phillips Bond using the 38 cm Harvard refractor and a 100 second exposure on the 17th July, 1850. 1851 Angelo Secchi Astrophotography In Rome Angelo Secchi (1818-1878) records Daguerreotypes of the partial phases of a solar eclipse with a 6.5-inch (16.2 cm) refractor of 8-feet (2.5 m) focal length. 1851 Frederick Scott Archer Photography Frederick Scott Archer (1813-1857), improves photographic resolution by spreading a mixture of collodion (nitrated cotton dissolved in ether and alcohol) and chemicals on sheets of glass. Wet plate collodion photography was much cheaper than Daguerreotypes. This negative- positive process permitted unlimited reproductions. The process was published but not patented. 1851 John Adams Whipple Astrophotography On the 22nd of March 1851, George Phillips Bond recorded in his notebook: 'Succeeded in Daguerreotyping Jupiter. Six plates were taken by Whipple and could distinguish the two principal equatorial belts – Time about as long as the Moon required or not much longer’. This pre-dates the planetary images of the Henry Brothers (1885-6) by over 30 years. 1851 M Berkowski Astrophotography First Daguerreotype of a total eclipse of the Sun obtained, recording the inner corona and several prominences on 28th July 1851 by Berkowski from Konigsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia) . 1852 Warren de La Rue Astrophotography First wet plate collodion images of the Moon obtained by Warren de la Rue (1815-1889) using a 13-inch (33 cm) reflector with 10-feet (3.05 m) focal length, on a mount without a clock drive. 1854 Joseph Bancroft Reade Astrophotography Joseph Bancroft Reade (1801-1870) uses a 60 cm reflector to photograph the sun (wet collodion). These images reveal the molten look of the solar photosphere. 1855 Alphonse Poitevin Photography Alphonse Poitevin invents the Collotype Process. The collotype plate is made by coating a plate of glass or metal with a substrate composed of gelatin or other colloid and hardening it. Then it is coated with a thick coat of dichromated gelatine and dried carefully at a controlled temperature (a little over 50 degrees Celsius). 1856 Lewis Morris Rutherfurd Astrophotography Lewis Morris Rutherfurd (1816-1892) photographs the Moon and the Sun using an achromatic refractor of 11.25-inch (28.5 cm) aperture over a two year period from 1856 to 1858. 1857 George Phillips Bond Astrophotography George Philips Bond (1825-1865) (son of William Cranch Bond) and John Adams Whipple, produces wet collodion photographs of the double star Mizar (Zeta Uma) and Alcor (80 Uma) using the 15-inch (38 cm) Harvard refractor. 1857 Warren de La Rue Astrophotography Warren de la Rue obtains images of Jupiter and Saturn with a 13-inch (33 cm) reflector. The exposures (12 seconds for Jupiter and 60 seconds for Saturn) were unsuccessful. The planet images measured only 1/2 mm on the plate. 1858 George Phillips Bond Astrophotography George Phillips Bond shows that the magnitude of stars could be derived from astronomical photographs, i.e. stellar photometry. 1858 Warren de La Rue Astrophotography Daily images of the Sun (weather permitting) using Warren De La Rue's, Kew Photoheliograph are obtained. A total of 2778 Sun photographs were obtained between the years 1862 and 1872. 1858 Warren de La Rue Astrophotography Warren de la Rue tries to image comet Donati without success. 1 2 3