The Great Refractor

Today in 1850, the first daguerreotype of a star (Vega) was taken. Between 1847 and 1852  William Cranch Bond and pioneer photographer John Adams Whipple used the Great Refractor telescope to produce images of the moon that are remarkable in their clarity of detail and aesthetic power. This was the largest telescope in North America at that time, and their images of the moon took the prize for technical excellence in photography at the 1851 Great Exhibition at The Crystal Palace in London.