Star Tales - the Lacaille planisphere

Lacaille’s southern planisphere of 1756

Above is a copy of Nicolas Louis de Lacaille’s star chart on which his 14 new southern constellations were first published. They are mixed in with the old Ptolemaic figures and the newer additions by Keyser, de Houtman, and Plancius. Lacaille rearranged some of Keyser and de Houtman’s southern constellations to make way for his own, notably in the case of Hydrus, which was rerouted and had its tail cropped. The original engraving appeared in the Mémoires of the Académie Royal des Sciences dated 1752 but actually published in 1756. This copy is from Jean Fortin’s Atlas Céleste and gives constellation names in French, as did Lacaille’s original.

A second edition of Lacaille’s planisphere was published in 1763 in Coelum Australe Stelliferum (for a zoomable version of it, see here). On that 1763 edition Lacaille Latinized the constellation names and labelled stars with Greek letters but the figures were the same as in 1756. Fortin’s version, above, adopted Lacaille’s Greek letters for the stars but kept the constellation names in French. Fortin’s Atlas Céleste, first published in 1776, was highly popular, and it is in this form that Lacaille’s inventions would have been most widely disseminated. (Author’s collection.)

LACAILLE’S 14 NEW FIGURES

(in French, with modern equivalents):

l’Atelier du Sculpteur (= Sculptor); la Boussole (Pyxis); les Burins (Caelum); le Chevalet et la Palette (Pictor); le Compas (Circinus); l’Equerre et la Regle (Norma); le Fourneau (Fornax); l’Horloge (Horologium); la Machine Pneumatique (Antlia); le Microscope (Microscopium); Montagne de la Table (Mensa); l’Octans de Reflexion (Octans); le Reticule Rhomboide (Reticulum); le Telescope (Telescopium).

Lacaille also showed the 12 constellations of Keyser and de Houtman under the following names: le Cameleon (Chamaeleon); le Dorade (Dorado); la Grue (Grus); l’Hydre Mâle (Hydrus); l’Indien (Indus); la Mouche (Musca); l’Oiseau de Paradis (Apus); le Paon (Pavo); le Phenix (Phoenix); le Poisson Volant (Volans); le Toucan (Tucana); le Triangle Austral ou le Niveau (Triangulum Australe, “or the level” – he depicted it with an attached plumb bob).

Note that, although Lacaille introduced the division of Argo into three parts in his catalogue, he still showed it as a unified figure on his chart.