Four examples of celestial cartography
listed below all follow in what might be termed the Flamsteed
tradition – that is, they are descendants of the epochal Atlas Coelestis
produced by John Flamsteed (1646–1719), the first
Astronomer Royal of Great Britain. Flamsteed’s atlas was
published posthumously in 1729 as an accompaniment to his
catalogue of 2,935 stars, Historia
Coelestis Britannica, the most
accurate and comprehensive celestial audit of its day.
Resulting from the establishment of the Royal Observatory at
Greenwich by King Charles II in 1675, Flamsteed’s
catalogue and atlas could be seen as a demonstration that the
realm of the British Empire extended to the heavens as well as
around the globe.
Flamsteed’s atlas was large and
expensive, and the constellation figures were somewhat austere
in appearance. A smaller, more popular edition was called for.
Nearly half a century later it appeared – not in Britain
but in France, under the authorship of Jean Fortin, a maker of
scientific instruments and globes. Fortin’s atlas was
first published in 1776, with a revised edition in 1795. It is
the 1795 version, in which a number of new constellations were
added to the maps, that is included here.
In Germany, Johann Bode, director of the
Berlin Observatory and an indefatigable popularizer of
astronomy, was inspired by Fortin’s success to produce an
atlas of his own along the same lines. The result, Vorstellung der Gestirne, was published in 1782. A second edition, with
additional constellations, appeared in 1805. Bode’s atlas
in turn inspired a British imitator, the Celestial Atlas of
Alexander Jamieson, bringing the cycle full circle.
Incidentally, Bode himself went on to produce an entirely new
atlas called Uranographia, a blockbuster which is generally regarded as
the greatest pictorial star atlas of all time, but as with
Flamsteed’s charts it was large and expensive and not
intended for popular consumption.
The fourth item on my list, Urania’s Mirror,
is not a true atlas but a set of illustrated cards for a lay
audience. Its depictions of the constellations were derived
from Alexander Jamieson’s atlas and can be considered as
the final flourishing of the Flamsteed tradition.
1. Atlas Céleste de Flamsteed
(1795). Jean Fortin. [to come]
2. Vorstellung der Gestirne (1782). Johann Elert Bode. [to come]
3. Celestial Atlas (1822). Alexander Jamieson. [to come]
4. Urania’s
Mirror (1825). A set of perforated constellation cards,
now attributed to the Rev. Richard Rouse Bloxam.
Vanity Fair cartoons:
Here are caricatures of two great
characters from the history of British astronomy, published by
the English weekly magazine Vanity
Fair in its ‘Man of the
Day’ feature. Sir George Airy was the greatest
professional astronomer of the 19th century, while R. A.
Proctor was arguably the greatest astronomy popularizer of the
same era.
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