Ingeborg Brun

Ingeborg Brun (27 June 1872 – 19 May 1929) was a Danish amateur astronomer, socialist and writer and best known for her hand-painted globes depicting the surface of Mars.

Although she made only a small number of them, Brun's museum-owned globes (called manuscript globes) "deserve special mention for their beauty and detailed rendering of the supposed Martian canals."

Early life Emmy Ingeborg Brun, more commonly known as Ingeborg Brun, was born in 1872 in Copenhagen, Denmark. She was the daughter of a court hunter Alexander Brun and his third wife Louise (born Wolff) and had two older brothers, Carl Frederik Emil Brun (born 1865) and Alf Harald Brun (born 1866).

Institutionalization Brun spent nine years in a mental institution. According to her diary, her brother Alf had her put there and only after nine years did she succeed, with the help of friends, to attest that she was not insane and able to return to society in 1910.

Milanese astronomer Schiaparelli first observed a network of dark lines on the surface of Mars in 1855 and had suggested that they were artificial canals, which turned out to be optical illusions. Therefore, her globes overlay Lowell's territorial observations with Schiaperelli's nomenclature for the planet's features, most of which are no longer used. In 1929, she published Testimony from Two Generations, which is also held at the Danish Royal Library.

Death Brun remained bedridden until her death on 19 May 1929 at her house at Svendborg.