Three atlases to draw the sky

Cellarius, the sky as an argument

Andreas Cellarius was born around 1596 in Neuhausen, near Worms, taught in Amsterdam and from 1637 ran the Latin school at Hoorn until his death in 1665. His Harmonia Macrocosmica came out in 1660 from Johannes Janssonius in Amsterdam, with a second edition in 1661.

Its 29 plates are not for finding a star: they compare ideas. The systems of Ptolemy, Copernicus and Tycho Brahe face each other as great gilded wheels, before the charts of both hemispheres. The promised second volume never appeared. Our plate of the phases of the Moon comes from this book.

Hevelius, the naked eye and the globe

Johannes Hevelius, born in Danzig (Gdańsk) in 1611 and dying there in 1687, measured the stars with quadrant and alidade, without a telescope: he was the last major astronomer to work that way. His catalogue holds 1,564 stars; his wife Elisabeth published it after his death.

The Firmamentum Sobiescianum, dated 1690 and printed at great cost in his own house, turns it into 56 sheets. The sky is seen from outside, as on a globe, hence the mirrored figures. Hevelius added seven constellations still in use, among them the Lynx, the Lizard, Leo Minor and the Shield, drawn for John III Sobieski’s victory at Vienna. Eleven of our twelve signs come from him.

Bode, accuracy and figure

Johann Elert Bode, born in Hamburg in 1747, directed the Berlin Observatory from 1786 to 1825 and died in Berlin in 1826. His Uranographia of 1801 runs to twenty large copper plates.

The atlas wants two things at once: to place stars and other objects accurately, and to let the figures keep their drawing. On its charts, the heroes of myth still fill the whole space. The Whale on the home page, the Twins and the pair Scorpius and Sagittarius are taken from it.

Plate references

Every engraving on the site, with its year, its maker and the digitised file.

Glyphs and type

The symbols for the signs and planets are drawn from the Noto Sans Symbols typeface. Headings are set in Bodoni Moda, body text in Jost. All three are under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 and served from the site itself.