On left introduction to "Journal" volume of Un site lunaire : (Le Palus Putredinis) by French astronomer Camille Flammarion (1842-1925). Includes note on the Société Astronomique de France [= Astronomical Society of France]: Fondée en 1887 ; Reconnue d'utilité publique en 1897 [= Founded in 1887 ; Recognized as being of public utility in 1897]. Dated February 9, 1905. Second of two pages. On right - lunar map of Palus Putredinis (presumably). Map indexed. With a compass rose orienting north toward bottom right of sheet. Black and white illustration. Map is 15 x 11 cm, on sheet 25 x 16 cm., Un site lunaire : (Le Palus Putredinis), by J. Deseilligny. Published by the Société Anonyme Notre-Dame des Anges in Autun (Saône-et-Loire), France, 1905. Lunar atlas comprised of a “Journal” volume, followed by three volumes of plates: Planches I, II and III. Title translates to: A Lunar Site: (the Palus Putredinis). Four-volume set housed together within a five-sided box covered in dark green linen with tan paper wrapping, printed with title, authorship and brief description of contents: 1re Série. Journal et Planches [= 1st Series. Journal and Boards]. Interior lined with marbled paper and includes a brown ribbon for securing volumes in place. Each volume bound in dark green linen-covered board with tan paper wrapping, printed with title, authorship and brief description of contents, e.g.: 1re Série. Journal [= 1st Series. Journal]. Tan paper labels on each spine, e.g.: 1st Series. Journal -- MCMV [1905]. Marbled end papers in each volume. Pages are sewn into binding of Journal; leaves of plates in Planches I-III are hole-punched and bound together with green cord. Plates in all volumes are mounted onto sheets. Journal collation: [8] pages, [1] leaf of plates, [1], 2-240, [4] pages (first and last two pages are blank). Includes title page, dedication, introduction, one lunar map on leaf of plates, three lunar diagrams appearing within the text on pages 54-55, 60-61 and 162-163, Appendices A, B and C, table of contents and colophon. Imprint for entire work presented on colophon of Journal. (All text pages viewable here as a composite image.) Planches I: [2] leaves, I-III, III (bis), IV-XLII leaves of plates, [2] leaves (first and last two leaves are blank). Includes 45 maps on 43 leaves of plates. Planches II: [2] leaves, XLIII-LXXXIV leaves of plates, [2] leaves (first and last two leaves are blank). Includes 42 maps on 42 leaves of plates. Planches III: [2] leaves, LXXXV-CXXV leaves of plates, [2] leaves (first and last two leaves are blank). Includes 40 maps and one view on 41 leaves of plates. Planches III has Appendices B and C but no A. Each volume has an ink signature - on title page of Journal and first blank page of Planches I, II and III. In total, atlas contains 3 lunar diagrams, 128 lunar maps and one view of a telescope. Black and white illustrations make up the first 125 lunar maps, and photographs the last three, as well as the view. Maps show topography, including craters. Relief shown pictorially and through shading. Date and hours of observations noted both alongside imagery and in lower margin of each sheet. Some maps provide insets, which present outline versions of the main map, indexed. Some of the main maps are also indexed, and a few contain question marks throughout. Illustrations focus on the area of Le Palus Putredinis [= Palus Putredinis]. Photographs present the moon in partial view, half-view and three-quarter-view, showing stunning details of the craters and other lunar features. All together a beautiful early synthesis of art and science on the moon. The Palus Putredinis - "Marsh of Decay" - is a lunar swamp. The area “stretches from the crater Archimedes southeast toward the rugged Montes Apenninus range located on the southeastern edge of Mare Imbrium. In the southern part of this area is a rille system designated Rimae Archimedes. To the south is a prominent linear rille named Rima Bradley, and to the east is the Rima Hadley, which served as the landing site for Apollo 15, and the Rimae Fresnel” (see link in Pub Reference for further information). "First edition, exceptionally rare, and presentation copy (see below) of this highly detailed topographic study of Palus Putredinus (the ‘Marsh of Decay’), a vast lava field within the Mare Imbrium on the surface of the moon, and containing the landing site of Apollo 15. The 126 plates comprise 122 photographs of detailed drawings of sectors of the Sea, executed by Jules Alfred Pierrot Deseilligny (1868–1918), amateur astronomer, founder of the French Society of Selenography, and a friend of Camille Flammarion. These drawings were based on Deseilligny’s observations made with his own telescope. A further three photographs were taken at the Paris Observatory, and a further one through Deseilligny’s telescope. This largely unknown work appears to be the most detailed study of an area of the moon up to the time of its publication. It is not in the Linda Hall catalogue The face of the moon, not mentioned in Whitaker’s Mapping and naming the moon, nor in Sheehan and Dobbins’ Epic moon. A history of lunar exploration in the age of the telescope. OCLC records only Harvard. Deseilligny devoted himself to selenography. He founded the Commission lunaire, an association of French astronomers, of which he was the first president. In 1906 they published the Projet d'etudes selenographiques en commun. (This work is) probably the rarest work on lunar topography known. It is also fascinating that at the time, drawing was considered more capable of rendering an accurate depiction of surface features than photography, so you have photographs of drawings (and in other works of the time, drawn highlights on photographs). Whereas at the same time Lowell was making drawings of things he thought he saw, and then photographing the results. The same approach but with very different outcomes. Provenance: The colophon of the first volume states: ‘Etude faite pour La Societe Astronomique de France. Exemplaire tire specialement pour Monsieur Loewy’, below which is a handwritten dedication by the author ‘en homage respecteuse de l’lauteur J. Deseilligny’. This is a dedication to the astronomer Maurice Loewy (1833–1907). Loewy was born on April 15, 1833 in Marianske Lazne, in what is now the Czech Republic. Lowey moved to Vienna in 1841 to become an assistant at the Vienna Observatory, working on celestial mechanics. In 1860, the director of the Observatory, Karl L. Littrow, secured a position for Lowey under Urbain Le Verrier, the director of the Paris Observatory. There he worked on the orbits of asteroids and comets and on the measurement of longitude, improving the accuracy of the Connaissance des Temps. He was elected a member of the Bureau des Longitudes in 1872 and of the Academie des Sciences in 1873. In 1896, Loewy became the director of the Paris Observatory. He is mainly known through his work on astrophotography with Pierre Henri Puiseux. " (William P. Watson, 2020)., https://wenamethestars.inkleby.com/feature/4566
