Lot Essay
In 1884, the Henry brothers produced a perfect negative of the Milky Way at the Paris Observatory. The director of the Observatory, M. Mouchez, instigated the construction of special photographic equipment with which the brothers photographed the stars at sixteen times magnification, without distortion. It was the perfection of these prints which inspired Mouchez to produce the large format atlas of the stars, the Carte Photographique du Ciel.