These plates are from Friederich Argelander's atlas Neue Uranometria. The intent of this atlas is to represent the magnitude and position of the stars with the constellation illustrations, represented only in outline, playing a relatively minor support role. (Source: W. Ashworth, Out of This World.)

Bartak's Gemeinfassliche Anleitung ("Popular Introduction to the Heavens") is a slim volume that shares a slipcase with a large celestial map of the northern sky, mounted on linen and folded to fit in the case. Instead of constellation figures, Bartak's map connects the prominent stars in each constellation with lines to make geometric figures that are easily distinguished from one another, a practice that became increasingly common later in the century.

Johann Bayer's star atlas and catalog, Uranometria, was the first of its kind. It represented a tremendous leap forward both esthetically and for its astronomical content, and became the standard for all later star atlases. Bayer's atlas was the first to portray the constellations as maps. Each plate has a carefully engraved grid so star positions can be determined precisely and used the star naming system that was adopted by later stellar cartographers. (Source: W. Ashworth, Out of This World.)

The Bevis star atlas is a reissue of the forty-nine plates from Bayer's Uranometria (1603), but with many more stars, and more accurate positions for those stars. It also includes nine nebulae that will later become Messier objects. The atlas was never officially published, so all existing copies are really pre-publication sets.

This is the first German version of the French edition of John Flamsteed's Atlas Celeste, published in 1776. The main innovation is the inclusion of boundaries around each constellation, so there are no longer any stars that are outside constellations. Bode would later publish his own atlas, Uranographia, in 1801.

Measuring 65 cm. and with double-page plates, this is the largest star atlas that has ever been published. The positions of more than 17,000 stars are given, as well as most constellations ever invented, and no less than 2500 nebulae that had been discovered and catalogued by William Herschel. The style of the constellation figures is new, taking a step away from the tradition of Bayer, Hevelius, or Flamsteed. (Source: W. Ashworth, Out of This World.)

Johann Bode's Introduction to the Stars was the first star atlas to contain constellation boundaries. Linear outlines surround each constellation and cover the entire celestial sphere, so that every star is located within the boundaries of some constellation. This is the second edition of Bode's Vorstellung der Gestirne, which first appeared in 1782.

This is one of the first atlases to omit constellation figures altogether, and use only the outlines that were established by Johann Bode in 1782. There is a star chart for each month of the year, most showing the stars as seen at latitude 51° north, but with several for other latitudes.

Burritt's Atlas of the Heavens was a widely-used example of a popular star atlas. Intended for the general public, only the brighter stars and nebulae were depicted on the charts. The traditional constellation figures were prominently featured.

The Macrocosmic Harmony is one of the most glamorous astronomical books ever published, with stunning hand-colored plates of the Copernican and Ptolemaic cosmological systems. It also contains a set of star charts depicting the stars as presented on the globes of Petrus Plancius and Willem Blaeu, and another set showing the heavens as redefined in Schiller's Coelum Stellatum Christianum (1627).

Coronelli was an Italian cartographer whose contributions to stellar mapping were impressive, but which were primarily confined to the large globes. These are his only flat printed maps.

The Doppelmayr atlas is a collection of astronomical and cosmological diagrams that includes ten star charts. Two of them are planispheres centered on the ecliptic poles, and two more are planispheres centered on the equatorial poles. There are six gnomic or sectional charts that follow the model of the seventeenth-century star charts of Ignace-Gaston Pardies.

The Phaenomena of Aratus was one of the ancient literary sources on the constellations. It was first published in its original Greek in 1499, in this collected edition of mathematical texts. The publisher was the famous Venetian printer Aldus Manutius, who used copies of the constellation figures from the Poeticon of Hyginus that was published in 1482 by Erhard Ratdolt.

John Flamsteed was the first Astronomer Royal of England. His principal motive in publishing this atlas was to correct what he felt were serious errors in Bayer's reverse depiction of the constellation figures, but it was welcomed because of its unprecedented accuracy. (Source: W. Ashworth, Out of This World.)

Jean Fortin, a globe maker for the French royal family, was commissioned to produce a revised edition of Flamsteed's star atlas. All of Flamsteed's twenty-six plates were re-engraved on a much smaller scale. (Source: W. Ashworth, Out of This World.)

This edition of Flamstéed's Atlas was reissued from the plates of the earlier French edition of 1776. The engravings were revised, however, to include not only newly observed stars and the nebulae that Messier had discovered, but also five new constellations that had been invented since 1776.

After Flamsteed's atlas had gone through two French and two German editions, it appeared in this Portuguese edition in 1804, which is now very scarce. The plates are copies of those in the 1795 French edition, with the most noticeable change being the Portuguese names to identify the constellations.

Gallucci's Theater of the World is an absolutely delightful collection of lively constellation figures, overlaying quite accurate maps of the stars. The star positions were taken from the catalog in Copernicus' On the Revolutions, and they were mapped by a trapezoidal system of projection that was common among geographic cartographers of the time.

Neuester Himmels was published in an unusual print style and technique with white stars shown against a black background. The first pressing was made before the constellation figures and text details were added. These prints looked like a night sky. Then the finished plate was printed once more, providing a comparison with figures. The maps represent the stars with a Flamsteed projection. (Source: W. Ashworth, Out of This World.)

Green wrote this book to help ordinary people identify stars and constellations in the night sky, and he kept it simple for that reason. One or two constellations are shown at a time, depicting only the brightest stars. The basis for the star plates was Bode’s Uranographia (1801), but Green’s charts are much reduced and simplified, with an added touch of color.

Christoph Grienberger's atlas was the first to show the New Star or Nova discovered by Tycho Brahe and is mainly based on Tycho's observations. Despite this significant contribution, this now very rare atlas was not distributed widely and was unknown to later atlas compilers. (Source: W. Ashworth, Further Out.)

Johannes Hevelius's Prodomus Astromomiae or Firmatmentum is notable for many reasons. It contains fifty-six, double-page, engraved star maps; the positions for the charts from Hevelius' star catalog were published together with the atlas; and it depicts the constellations as they would appear on a globe. This atlas also introduced eleven new constellations and includes a depiction of the southern stars. (Source: W. Ashworth, Out of This World.)

Hyginus's Poeticon Astronomicon was one of the primary ancient literary sources on the constellations. It was first published in 1482 by Erhard Ratdolt with charming woodcuts, and reprinted in 1485 (our copy of the 1485 edition is hand-colored). Although star positions are indicated in these figures, they have little to do with either the positions described by Hyginus, or the actual positions of the stars in the sky. The Poeticon was often reissued; in the 1512 editon, the title was changed to De Mundi et Sphere, and there was a new set of constellation woodcuts, which are much less appealing than the Ratdolt originals.

Alexander Jamieson was both author and artist for this popular atlas, which is based on Johann Bode's celestial atlas of 1805. It contains the same number of plates, the new constellations that were introduced in the Bode atlas, and the same views of the stars. Jamieson added color, however, which increased its popular appeal and made it a very attractive atlas indeed.

This rarely seen first edition of the Atlas of Astronomy is made up of 18 plates illustrating the heavenly bodies with white star-charts on a blue background. Described by Sir John Herschel as "a perfect treasure of compressed information" it was designed to accompany some popular astronomical treatises by its editor, John Russell Hind, and others. Its author, Alexander Keith Johnston, engraved the plates and all phases of the book's production were supervised by Hind.

In his book, De Stella Nova ('On the new star in Ophiuchus's foot'), Kepler reported on a brilliant new star in the constellation Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer, which appeared in October 1604. It was a supernova, and Kepler utilized a star chart as the basic framework for presenting his observations. He was impressed that the new star appeared at the same time as a triple conjunction of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, so all four objects are prominently shown on his map.

Phillipe La Hire was a notable French astronomer, and his two planispheres of the northern and southern stars were published as individual sheets (although they were included in many French atlases throughout the eighteenth century). The copies presented here were colored expertly by hand. The constellation figures are ultimately derived from the prototypes in Bayer's Uranometria. (Source: W. Ashworth, Out of This World.)

Littrow's Atlas of the Starry Heavens was compiled for the use of other astronomers, rather than for the viewing public. The constellation figures have been reduced to a faint outline, although the star symbols are very dark and prominent. Only Bayer letters are used for nomenclature.

Meissner's Hand-Atlas was produced as a companion to Christian Rudiger's Popular Introduction to the Heavens. The star atlas portion of this work was based on Flamsteed's Atlas Celeste of 1795, and Bode's Uranographia of 1801. The plate order and field of view were adopted from Flamsteed and the constellation figures were based on Bode. (Source: W. Ashworth, Further Out.)

Middleton's atlas is laid out on five charts, one depicting the polar constellations, and four more showing the stars of winter, spring, summer, and fall. Each map has some of the constellation figures hand-colored in light pastels. (Source: W. Ashworth, Further Out.)

Intended for use as a popular atlas, Mollinger's Sky Atlas with Transparent Stars used an ingenious device. Star maps, printed on 16 cards with a transparent backing, had different sized holes punched at the star positions. When held to a bright light in a dim room, the stars appeared in the sky as they would in the sky. (Source: W. Ashworth, Out of This World.)

In 1600, an edition the Phaenomena by the Greek poet Aratus appeared with engravings that are among the most beautiful constellation figures ever printed. They were copied and used again, in a smaller format, for this edition of the Poeticon astronomicon by the Latin author Hyginus.

The French and German editions of this atlas are made up of sets of cards, each intended to demonstrate various principles of astronomy. The French version also includes explantory text. The atlas was first published in an English edition by James Reynolds in 1850 and identified John Emslie as the artist and engraver.

Each atlas also includes six charts backed with colored tissue paper backgrounds and cut out shapes to demonstrate aspects of the night sky. The German edition includes additional images to represent a simulated view, showing how these charts would look if held up to a light as originally intended.

Sozviezdiia Predstavlennyia na XXX Tablitsakh is the earliest Russian star atlas. A translation of the title page for this book reads: Presentation of Constellations in 30 Tables with Description and Guide to Finding Them Comfortably in the Sky: Composed for Educational Institutions and Amateur Astronomers. Based on the 1806 edition of Bode's atlas, this book contains a number of constellations that are now obsolete. (Source: W. Ashworth, Further Out.)

The Riedig Himmels-Atlas is one of many in the early nineteenth century that was modeled after Johann Bode's Uranographia of 1801. It is unusual in that it is very small--the plates in the Bode atlas are nearly fifty times larger than the tiny plates of the Riedig atlas. Another singular feature is the way color is used; instead of tinting the constellation images, Riedig outlined them in a delicate blue, making the figures almost rise up off the page. (Source: W. Ashworth, Further Out.)

Little is known about Johann Rost, the author of the 1723 Atlas Portatilis Coelistis, other than that he was a Nuremberg astronomer. His portable atlas follows the style of Johannes Hevelius by the inclusion of constellations invented by Hevelius. There are fourteen plates, each one usually divided into three panels, to present forty-one constellation maps. Other plates are scattered throughout the book, some in layers and the moon makes a dramatic presentation as a foldout, making a total of thirty-eight tables. The engravings are wonderfully hand-colored. (Source: W. Ashworth, Out of This World.)

Coelum Stellatum Christianum was Schiller’s attempt to replace all of the pagan constellations with Christian counterparts. The new system was too radical a change and never caught on, but for astronomers, this atlas had other contributions to make. Schiller worked with Johann Bayer to include corrections and additions to the stars and their positions, producing a more accurate atlas than Bayer’s Uranometria. (Source: W. Ashworth, Out of This World.)

Coelum Stellatum Christianum Concavum is also bound within this volume. This plates featured in this second version of Schiller's celestial atlas show the heavens —without the constellation figures—from the perspective of a person looking out from the Earth.

Seller was a commercial cartographer, not an astronomer, who thought there would be a ready market for an inexpensive star atlas with small plates. His portable atlas, first published in 1680, was apparently successful and it was reissued around 1700 in this second edition.

Christoph Semler’s atlas takes a departure from its predecessors with the black background on the woodblock prints. Semler derived his constellations and star positions from the Johannes Hevelius atlas and included all nine of the new constellation figures that Hevelius introduced. However, all of Semler’s constellation figures are reversed, being depicted from the vantage of an observer on Earth. (Source: W. Ashworth, Out of This World.)

This tiny atlas was probably intended for classroom use. The star maps are unabashedly copied, in much reduced form, from Bayer's Uranometria. In a few instances, two or three Bayer plates are here combined into one. We include the first and second editions in this collection.

The Thomas atlas has 54 etched star maps of individual constellations. He was one of the first to label stars with their Bayer Greek letters, although he also added Arabic numbers which refer to a star catalog, and Roman numbers to indicate magnitude. The constellation figures are beautifully drawn.

This selection of images are a sample of the large collection taken from atlases including 1782 and 1805 editions of Johann Bode's Vorstellung der Gestirne, Andreas Cellarius's Harmonia Macrocosmica, and C.G. Reidig's Himmels-Atlas. Learn more about the Golden Age of the Star Atlas at Out of This World.