The post-enlightenment history of astronomy is planetary history, not only because it necessarily conceives of the earth as a planet among planets, but because astronomers increasingly came to rely on a string of telescopes across the earth in order to make accurate observations. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, one of the largest manufacturers of astronomical telescopes (Grubb) was based in Dublin, and sent its telescopes to Melbourne (the Great Melbourne Telescope), Victoria, Wellington, Cape Town, and beyond.        

Based on archival research undertaken in Wellington, Victoria, and Dublin, the paper will trace the process of installing Grubb telescopes in Melbourne and Wellington, paying attention to how both were conceived as part of a developing network of imperial observation points, yoking the southern hemisphere to the scientific world of Europe.

The paper emerges from an ongoing research project about how novelists in the late 1800s mediated the breathless discoveries of astronomy, which emphasised the astounding scale of the universe. This sense of incomprehensible scale posed a challenge to the novel form in particular (long linked to the scale the nation), which struggled to find new ways to comprehend ever expanding scales.