French astronomer-artist Lucien Rudaux was the grandfather of modern space art. In the 1920s and 30s, he produced spacescapes of such accuracy that many hold up well even today.
Here is a
drawing of the surface of the Moon. Other artists showed towering, jagged peaks, but Rudaux depicted a rolling terrain and rounded mountains like the landscapes photographed by Apollo astronauts. Rudaux pointed out one fact that he thought was patently obvious: one could look through a telescope and see with one's own eyes the rounded profiles of the lunar mountains "standing out from the edge of the disk".
