The Changing Faces of Mars and Venus, 1892

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The Changing Faces of Mars and Venus was published in 1892 in Robert Stawell Ball’s An Atlas of Astronomy. This elegant diagram compares the changing apparent sizes of the two plan ets as seen from Earth. The planets themselves remain the same. As they move through their orbits, however, their distance from us changes dramatically. To nineteenth-century astronomers, these shifting discs were more than visual curiosities. They were essential clues for measuring the architecture of the Solar System. Simple, graphic and almost abstract, the illustration transforms orbital mechanics into something immediately visible. Show more