Worth a Thousand Words - Planets and Comets

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For planetery images, photography could not replace drawing because the subject wouldn't hold still long enough. When atmospheric turbulence bounced and distorted the picture, the human eye could still pick out details. In fact, the human eye is so good at finding patterns that it could even see details that weren't there.

The 1867 map of Mars by Flammarion shows what the red planet looked like before Schiaparelli changed it. This is the bottom half of a drawing, the top half of which is a map of Earth for comparison.

The lower picture is a late nineteenth century map of Mars by Leo Brenner, showing how much nonexistant detail can be added when fuzziness meets imagination.

DAHAP Solar Digital Archives of the History of Astronomy.

1997 drawing of comet Hale-Bopp by H. Fukushima.

National Astronomy Observatory, Japan Drawing of Comet Hale-Bopp