Sky & Telescope - December 2023 - 31

tion in 1907 of the three volumes of the Ekphrasis tes Hagias
Sophias (Atlas of the Hagia Sophia). Here Antoniadi honed the
already peculiarly realistic and meticulous drawing style he
had exhibited in his BAA Mars maps, which included making
extensive use of the time-consuming technique of stippling -
rendering a scene with many tiny dots.
Upon returning from a chess tournament in Athens in
the summer of 1909, Antoniadi found in his letterbox a note
from Henri-Alexandre Deslandres, director of the Meudon
Observatory, inviting him to Paris where he might observe
that year's favorable opposition of Mars with the observatory's
Grande Lunette. With an aperture of 83 cm (33
inches), it was the masterpiece of the French opticians Paul
and Prosper Henry, and even today it remains the largest
refractor in Europe. Lured out of astronomical retirement, his
long apprenticeship at last over, Antoniadi now emerged as a
consummate master, a prince among Mars observers.
That summer, as Mars approached its late-September
opposition, the planet's features were largely obliterated by a
great dust storm such as had never been seen before. Meanwhile,
on Earth, the dust seems to have settled on a different
storm. Perhaps because the two men no longer worked
together, relations with Flammarion had improved significantly
- to the point where Flammarion invited Antoniadi
to set up his 8½-inch Calver reflector to monitor conditions
on Mars from his lawn at Juvisy-sur-Orge. As August turned
to September, the Martian dust had mostly cleared, and the
planet's surface details began to re-emerge.
It was a magical night when Antoniadi at last took his
place at the eyepiece of the Grande Lunette on September 20,
1909. Although most of the stars above Paris that evening
were hidden behind a veil of fog, the air was exceptionally
calm - a planet observer's dream. Antoniadi would never
experience better seeing than he did that night. " The first
glance cast on the planet, " he wrote in an interim report
for the Journal of the BAA, " was a revelation . . . . I did not
believe that our present means could ever yield us such
images of Mars. "
The 1890s and 1900s were the heyday of the Martian
canal controversy, and almost every Mars observer's chart
was crisscrossed with linear canals - even the one Antoniadi
had prepared for the BAA Mars Section. But now, with
the Grande Lunette, the Red Planet presented a different
appearance. Using a magnification of 320×, Antoniadi
saw " a host of bewildering irregularities, all held steadily,
and standing out with a boldness and definiteness defying
description. " He observed details that weren't linear, but
HAGIA SOPHIA This painting from Antoniadi's privately published (and
now very rare) Ekphrasis tes Hagias Sophias (Atlas of the Hagia Sophia)
is notable for its stippling technique, which he later used in many of his
planetary drawings.
CAMERA SHY Antoniadi, who rarely posed for photos, is shown
here taking notes at the desk on the observing platform of the Grande
Lunette. This is the only known photo showing Antoniadi observing.
sk yand tele scope .o r g * DECEMBER 2023 31
instead " natural and logical, irregular and chequered. " The
south part of Syrtis Major was " a maze, " the Mare Tyrrhenum
appeared spotted " like a leopard skin. "
Confronted with such a vast amount of Martian detail, an
ordinary observer wouldn't have even attempted to draw the
planet, and even Antoniadi noted that the perfect representation
of every detail " was evidently beyond the power of man. "
But it was at this point that his savant-like qualities entered.
Lurking in the darkness, with the shutter of the dome opened
to the brilliant planet shining like a red-hot coal in the night
sky, he concentrated on a particular small region and awaited
the most favorable moments to catch the fine details and
engrave them in his memory. He did the same with each adjacent
region until, having stored all the shapes in their relative
positions, he withdrew from the eyepiece and sat at a table
where he quickly worked to set down everything on paper
from memory - with exquisite results.
From Paris to Arizona
Just before that monumental night at Meudon, Antoniadi had
renewed a long-dormant correspondence with the famous
American astronomer and arch-canalist, Percival Lowell.
Some years earlier, Antoniadi had tactlessly criticized some
of Lowell's observations of Venus. He now apologized for the
tone of his criticisms and promised to send Lowell the results
of his work at Meudon. In response, Lowell lectured Anto
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Sky & Telescope - December 2023

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