National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 56 | April 2002


To Catch a Star:
Two Significant, Early Celestial Atlases

Plate 20 Goldbach, Christian Friedrich
Plate 20 Goldbach, Christian Friedrich

Plate 20 Goldbach, Christian Friedrich

 

By1552 Alessandro Piccolomini (1508–1578) was a well-established Venetian cosmographer with the publication of yet another edition of his popular work: De la sfera del Mondo ... [with] De le stelle fisse which first appeared in 1540.

A slim volume, the De la sfera del Mondo, or On the globe of the world, opens the work discussing the known cosmography of the time and its associated methodology. Written in a popular style in the Italian vernacular the work includes diagrams relating to the earth’s great circles, the relationship between the moon, sun and earth and other planetary observations which dot the finely spaced text. The work is further enhanced by the ornamented capitals, which open each chapter of the study.

The same ornamentation continues into the second half of the work, the De le stelle fisse or On the fixed stars. Regarded as the first star atlas it contains 47 of Ptolemy’s 48 constellations as well as the constellation of the Southern Cross, first documented by Corsali in 1516. Four levels of magnitude are represented, grading from the smallest to the brightest or largest star. Piccolomini was the first to use letters to represent the most notable stars in each constellation with ‘A’ representing the most important one. This system of nomenclature was adopted with modification by Bayer and subsequently by all modern astronomers.

In contrast, German born Christian Friedrich Goldbach’s Neuester Himmels-Atlas zum Gebrauche fur Schul- und Akademischen Unterricht, published in Weimar in 1799 is a much larger work containing 56 maps describing 10 500 stars. Twenty six of the maps centre on the major constellations north of the Tropic of Capricorn and another 25 represent the northern hemisphere. One other map represents the southern hemisphere based on the observations derived from Lacaille a noted French astronomer who flourished 50 years earlier. This map features non-Ptolemaic constellations including Taube, the 12 of Keyser & Houtman, Carls Eiche and the 14 of Lacaille.

Facing each of the constellation plates is a print of the same area struck from partially finished plates, i.e. without the names letters and coordinates. Printed in relief (ink on the surface) rather than the usual intaglio (ink in the engraved lines with a clean surface) the figures appear white against a black background, as if one was looking at the night sky. This technique had been used before but it was the first of its kind to catch the eye of the Paris astronomical establishment (Warner, Deborah J. The Sky Explored: Celestial Cartography, 1500–1800. New York: A.R. Liss, c.1979, p.96).
—Maura O’Connor

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