Thursday
Nov082007
Philipp Fauth's Map of the Moon
Thu 2007-11-08
Philipp Fauth (1867 - 1941) was a German amateur astronomer who is best known for two things: his advocacy of Hans Hörbiger's semi-crackpot Welteislehre, and his amazing, highly detailed contour maps of the Moon. The above image is a small section of his great lunar map on which he was working when he died. Fauth's son later completed it and the map was finally published in 1964. The contour lines are not based on proper measurements but are careful estimates based on drawings. The large crater in the bottom right corner is Tycho. A good account of the Philipp Fauth and his Moon Atlas can be found in The Astronomical Scrapbook, Joseph Ashbrook, 1984.
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