The Milky Way as Optical Phenomenon Perception and Photography in the Drawings of Anton Pannekoek

One of Anton Pannekoek’s main scientific projects was to provide a representation of the appearance of the Milky Way – an object he believed to be an optical illusion. This paper elucidates how Pannekoek thought the Milky Way appearance was formed by a combination of human psychology and physiology, and why he attributed such significance to it. In doing so, it explores the connections between Pannekoek’s scientific methodology and his socialist epistemology. The paper also outlines the various techniques Pannekoek employed in his research. To observe the Milky Way, he used both extrafocal photography and visual observations by himself and others. To represent the results, he combined naturalistic drawings with verbal descriptions, numerical tables, and isophotic diagrams.