11/08/2026
A friendly reminder to never, ever, look directly at the sun!💫 🌙 Alike many others around the globe, we’re quite excited about the rare cosmological happenings which are occurring tomorrow & across the month of August 🌑 🌞 🌕
Enjoy this eye-catching selection of fitting content found within our collections, beginning with the Fagel Collection 🌞 (swipe for manuscripts, prints and printing blocks!) :
The eclipse came into play as a useful metaphor, as in this anonymous Dutch polemical pamphlet from the Fagel Collection, which complained of corruption among the managers of the Dutch East India company. The neat woodcut vignette on the title page, printed in 1625, uses the eclipse to suggest that someone is being kept in the dark 🫣
(Shelfmark: Fag.H.2.39 no.6)
✨ Arabic & Islamic Manuscripts Project (AIM)
A folio featuring the solar eclipse from al-Kharaqī’s Kitāb al-Tabṣirah fī al-Hayʾah wa al-Falak (The Book of Enlightenment in Cosmology and Orb), c.13th century. The diagram depicts the Earth at the centre of the universe, with the moon and sun orbiting around it. Lines of sight from the Earth’s surface represented by cones show how the moon blocks out the view of the sun either fully or partially, with the total eclipse of the sun at the top depicted as a black circle and the partial eclipse of the sun to the right in a semi black circle (TCD MS 1523, fol. 40v) ⚫️
🌑 🌙 TCD MS 37, fol. 58v :
Joshua commands the sun and moon to stand still. This wonderful marginal detail is from a mid 13thC Bible and explains why Joshua looks like a mid 13thC knight.
Digitised as part of the Manuscripts for Medieval Studies project, part of the Virtual Trinity Library ✨
The four lunar phases are represented here in this whimsical illustration designed by artist Edmund Dulac for William Bulter Yeats’ ‘A Vision’ (published in 1925). Check out the photoengraved printing block, from which this print was created, in the final slide.
Happy eclipse and stargazing, everyone 🌝🌛🌚🌜
TCD MS 11748/59 : Photoengraved printing block, manufactured by the Irish Photographic Engraving Co. ✨ Cuala Press Object Collection
