Draper, a physician and professor of chemistry at New York University, was the first to produce a successful daguerreotype of the moon. On March 16, 1840, he wrote in his laboratory notebook, "This evening I exposed a prepared plate to the moonbeams which had been conveyed by a double convex lens." In this plate, a halo-like vignette encircles the image of the moon, creating a crescent shape that evokes the lunar phases. Despite his accomplishment, Draper's efforts received only modest recognition from his contemporaries; until recently his lunar daguerreotypes were believed to be lost.
