Etienne Leopold Trouvelot left behind two legacies.
One deserves admiration and respect, while the other earns him contempt and criticism.
His depictions of the cosmos were among the most accurate of their time.
It is through these works that Trouvelot remains esteemed, even as history struggles to overlook his ecological misstep.
Etienne Leopold Trouvelot was born in 1827 in the Aisne region of northern France.
Caterpillar of the spongy moth.
Its a voracious eater that can completely defoliate entire trees eventually killing them.
That October, a powerful solar storm caused auroras to appear at unusually low latitudes.
To accurately reproduce what he observed, Trouvelot employed the classic grid technique used by artists.
Over the course of his life, Trouvelot created approximately 7,000 high-quality astronomical illustrations.
However, even as he refined his craft, his work faced growing competition from advancements in astrophotography.
He joined the Meudon Observatory in Paris, continuing his observations of the solar system.
By the time the Massachusetts government fully grasped the scale of the infestation, Trouvelot was long gone.
