Audio description content. A panel of four images with text, above a waist height glass display case.

Panel text content. Learning by the light of a magic lantern. These slides for use in a magic lantern, an early form of a projector, were a teaching tool from Eighteen Forty Nine. They came with a book called ‘A Compendium of Astronomy: Description of the Most Interesting Phenomena of the Heavens’.

Audio description content. In the glass case are the actual slides, lit from behind. Above them, the image panel reproduces the four slides and a printed description of the image each one portrays. The images are viewed from left to right.

Panel text content. Slide one, diagram 17. The moon drawn as seen through a telescope. A circular black and white image of the face of the moon. The details of its surface do not appear to match the familiar image of the moon as seen by the naked eye. Whether that is due to ageing of the slide, or some difference in interpretation is hard to tell. It could as easily be an image of fungus and stains in the bottom of a long abandoned coffee cup.

Panel text content. Slide two, diagram 20. The phases of the moon as it orbits the earth. A circular bright blue background with a large yellow sun at three o’clock. Left of the centre is an image of planet earth, three quarters of the size of the sun. Arrayed on spokes around the planet are eight identical spheres representing a position of the moon relative to the earth. Each moon is shown divided vertically, half black, half white, the white side of all eight moons are white on the side closest to the sun, dark on the further side. The sun, positioned at the right, shines always on the right hand side of the moon, and as the moon orbits the earth, we view the moon from different sides, which makes it appear that the light on the moon is moving from side to side. Stepped out from each sphere is an image of how the moon appears to us at each point of its orbit. At the twelve and six o’clock position of its orbit the moon is shown as a half. At nine o’clock the whole moon is showing. At the three o’clock position, there is no visible moon. The other two moon phases depicted on each side are mirrored images, at seven and nine, two thirds of the moon is visible, at two and five, slivers of light illuminate one third of each moon.

Panel text content. Slide three, diagram 21. An imagined view of the earth from the moon. The earth hangs in the sky above the horizon of a rocky volcanic plain. Astronomers on Earth could see the moon lacked water or atmosphere but also saw signs of volcanic activity.

Panel text content. Slide four, diagram 22. A lunar eclipse as the earth’s shadow falls across the moon. A circular bright blue background with a large yellow sun at three o’clock. Left of the centre is an image of planet earth, three quarters of the size of the sun. A circle outlined around the planet shows the orbit of the moon, with the moon positioned at three o’clock relative to the earth. Perspective lines angle from the sun, past the moon, and on past the earth. There is a cone of darkness that expands along those perspective lines from the moon and beyond the planet. In this position, the moon completely obstructs light from the sun. This type of eclipse occurs during the day and is characterised by the sudden onset of darkness. If the moon were positioned at nine o’clock in its orbit of the earth, the planet itself obstructs the light from the sun. This type of eclipse occurs at night, and is characterised by the moon appearing to rapidly cycle through it’s phases from full moon, to complete darkness, and back to full moon over the course of an hour or so.