Stereoview Tenerife Charles Piazzi Smyth

3 stereoviews from images made by Charles Piazzi Smyth in 1856, at the temporary observatory on a peak in Tenerife.

The views are on light blue, card mounts, 2 containing labels reading, ' Temporary Astronomical Observatory at Alta Vista 10 710ft on the peak of Teneriffe'.

1 view shows Piazzi Smyth himself, sitting at the foot of the telescope's equatorial mount. This is included in Piazzi Smyth's book, 'Tenerife, An Astronomer's Experiment', published in 1858 by Lovell Reeve and is captioned,'Sheepshank's telescope, first erected on Mount Guajara, the peak of Tenerife in the distance'.

Charles Piazzi Smyth was a professor of astronomy at Edinburgh University, he was appointed Astronomer Royal in 1845. For the trip to Tenerife in 1856, he furnished himself with some portable photographic equipment, to produce wet plate collodion images. With this equipment, he produced high-quality images for making stereoviews and is believed to have made 200, in the course of his stay. The book he produced was the first to feature stereoviews.