Science Art: The Great Telescope, Melbourne Observatory

from https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/albums/72157638850077096 Click to embiggen

Look up!

I’m not sure exactly what the story is behind this image, because it’s part of the bewildering-but-great (and partially mechanically curated) British Library Space & SciFi album.

It’s from the 1889 novel The Conquest of the Moon: a story of the Bayouda, by André Laurie (a pseudonym of Paschal Grousset). There are more (splendid!) illustrations from it here, especially what seems to be an Arabic eclipse. At least they had some camels die on the way, maybe?