Rare folio of spectacular chromolithographs by Etienne Trouvelot. The set contains thirteen of the original fifteen plates; it is missing plates V and VI, and all the rest are there. Only a handful of complete sets are known to exist. Trouvelot (1827 - 1895) was a French artist and astronomer who fled to America in 1851 after a coup d'etat by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. Trouvelot settled in Bedford, Massachusetts and was an amateur entomologist, so he tried to import silk moths from Europe for silk production, but brought back gypsy moth eggs instead, and they escaped near his home and caused havoc in the countryside. (The destruction caused by the moth invasion persists to this day.) Consequently he turned to astronomy and put his skills as an artist to good use by illustrating his observations of the heavens. When the director of the Harvard College Observatory saw the quality of Trouvelot's works, he invited Trouvelot to join the staff of the observatory. Trouvelot spent several years working there and the drawings he made were considered to be the most accurate pictures of celestial objects available until the perfection of dry-plate photography. The drawings were reproduced in color in 1876. Trouvelot made over 7000 drawings, and in an effort to reach a wider audience, he contacted Charles Scribner's Sons, a New York publishing house who agreed to publish his work. He personally supervised preparation of the lithographic stones, and the set was finally published in 1882, with an accompanying book, The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawing Manual. Each plate bears a facsimile of Trouvelot's signature and is titled with the precise time and date when the observation was made. He returned to France in 1882 to work on astronomy overseas. These are original plates from the series, not prints or copies of the chromolithographs. The covers measure 39 x 29 1/8 in. wide; the plates measure 38 1/8 x 28 1/8 in. wide and the sight size is 21 18 x 28 1/8 in. wide, with full margins. The covers have a split binding, which is to be expected, and the plates have light soiling, minor tears, scattered foxing, and light chips around the edges.