Atlases of the Starry Sky

Just as the ancient Greeks depicted figures on the celestial sphere and named them from mythology and everyday life, astronomers and cartographers of the New Age began to transfer their representations of the Universe onto paper. The history of star sky atlases resembles a ball of yarn woven from science, politics, religion, art, and even commercial interests. By reading this book, you will learn how astronomers and cartographers reshaped the sky, renaming constellations in honor of ruling houses, Christian saints, and virtues; the methods publishers used to attract readers and why, for the sake of beauty, they sacrificed the scientific aspect of atlases; how the issue of copyright in the collection Mirror of Urania spawned a mystery that was solved nearly two centuries later? And the 29 illustrations from the treatise Harmony of the Macrocosm by Andreas Cellarius will give you an idea of how consistency and harmony in the Universe were viewed during the golden age of cartography.