This small but remarkable photograph, one of only three surviving prints, one of which is in the Musée d’Orsay, may have indelibly linked Loppé’s name to the history of photography. Yet after a lifetime spent studying meteorological effects in his landscapes, dawns, sunsets, mist, fog, clouds and, above all, snow, it seems ironic that this one cosmique shot would, over time, eclipse nearly everything else he had achieved.