The French astronomical society (Société Astronomique de France/SAF) was founded in Paris in 1887 by Camille Flammarion, the then famous author of several best-selling books including La Pluralité des mondes habités (1862), L’Astronomie Populaire and Description générale du ciel (1880). This paper looks at how Flammarion appropriated the notion of popular science and how he implemented his scientific project, distinct from the astronomy of official observatories and scientific institutions.
This work focuses on the activities and socio-scientific functioning of the SAF. It shared similarities with contemporary learned societies, which were closely linked with professional learned societies, yet had its own distinctive features. A detailed analysis of the 1913 membership list reveals an atypical socio-geographical composition.
On one hand, the society displays the expected over-representation of the elite, but it also includes significant participation from the working classes and women. More importantly, it highlights the geographical expansion of the SAF, which helped to structure a transatlantic space for popular astronomy, with strong connections to Latin America and the Caribbean, and a global presence that involved numerous collaborations and interactions with local societies.
A second aspect concerns the scholarly content promoted by the SAF. Systematic examination of the society's bulletin and consultation of Flammarion’s archives have allowed us to explore the scientific project behind this popular astronomy movement. We show that Flammarion’s goal was to generate astronomical knowledge within an amateur network that operated in parallel with state-run observatories, with a partly alternative agenda, particularly in his focus on extraterrestrial life.

Born 1842 in Montigny-le-Roi, France, Camille Flammarion was a prolific author of books dealing with astronomy, ballooning, and spiritualism. His first book On the plurality of Inhabited Worlds (1862) was immediately successful with the French public. It was quickly translated into German (1864), Spanish and Russian (1865). Other books by him from the same decade were translated in Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, and Italian. By his death in 1925, hundreds of editions of his books had been translated in close to twenty different languages, including Hebrew, Turkish, Armenian and Kannada, a Dravidian language from India.
While the appeal of Flammarion's topics, including as extraterrestrial life, the origin and end of the universe, and life after death, partly explains the global fascination of his readership, it is interesting to survey the different ways his work was received in various markets. This paper presents an analysis of the many different versions of Flammarion’s work published around the word. In many instances, we can draw on prefaces to understand the appeal of Flammarion’s work. Some ways in which the original publication was adapted to different context will be studied. The role and position of translators will be investigated.
Translation of Flammarion’s work played an important part in diffusion of his ideas around the world, contributing to shaping narratives about science and its relationship to spirituality in the modern world. By examining their diversity, we can trace ways in which a global discourse of science popularization emerged between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This paper analyzes Gabriela Mistral’s reading of the works of French astronomer and novelist Camille Flammarion, during the first decade of the 20th century. The analysis focuses on the journalistic texts published by Gabriela Mistral in the local press of La Serena, Chile (El Coquimbo and La Voz de Elqui), between 1904 and 1908. The main objectives are, on the one hand, to demonstrate that Mistral’s appropriation of Flammarion’s ideas constituted a relevant aspect to motivate and respond to intellectual and spiritual concerns in her initial stage as a teacher and poet; and, on the other, it seeks to verify that audiences in local contexts and peripheral spaces play an active role in the circulation of scientific knowledge, as well as in attributing meaning to it.

The predicted return of Halley's Comet in 1910 provoked social and scientific reactions around the world and was linked to local political problems. It also provided opportunities to discuss modern scientific knowledge and speculative theories about the comet in the popular media, most prominently Camille Flammarion's warning about the danger presented by the toxic chemical composition of the comet's tail. As Flammarion was the most widely-read science writer at this time, this theory was much debated in popular and scholarly circles, resonating with traditional ideas of comets as bad omens.
In Ecuador, two simultaneous news items can be compared to study the role of the popular press in producing social uprisings. Rumours that the King of Spain would favour the Peruvian position regarding the border with Ecuador in the Amazon region provoked popular demonstrations in Quito and Guayaquil in early 1910 and similar reactions in Lima. At the same time, discussion about Flammarion's predictions of the end of the world by "the assassin Halley's comet" unfolded.
How was the idea of an impending war and a collision with a comet's tail read by audiences in both countries? We analyze the local press in Quito, Guayaquil, and Lima to discuss its role in promoting both scientific literacy among large audiences and the dissemination of scandalous or alarming news. We approach this subject from a global frame, looking at how information circulated from France, the Unites States and other Latin American countries, without losing the local context for this celestial event.