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Astronomical Images : Celestial map

Johannes Bayer

Astronomical Images

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Johannes Bayer (1572-1625) was educated at the University of Ingolstadt and became legal advisor to the City Council of Augsburg in 1612. The illustrated celestial atlas, the <i>Uranometria</i>, was sponsored by the humanist-patrician, Marc Welser (1558-1614) and published in Augsburg in 1603. It contains twenty-nine maps of the sky engraved by Alexander Mair (c. 1559-1617) showing about 2,000 stars. The book is dedicated to leaders of the City Council of Augsburg. In his address to the reader, Bayer explains that he wished to rectify the confusion caused by the plethora of names for stars since antiquity. In particular, the book takes account of descriptions from Hipparchus, Ptolemy, the <i>Alphonsine Tables</i>, and Copernicus collated by Tycho Brahe (and circulating in manuscript form at the time), which Bayer had studied carefully. Bayer shows no interest in engaging with the different cosmological theories of his time. This is a typically humanist work seeking to establish a proper correspondence between 'names and things'. Some copies feature both the figures and accompanying text, while the images and words are separated into two volumes in other instances. In addition to the forty-eight Ptolemaic constellations, <i>Uranometria</i> features twelve new constellations of the southern skies and two planispheres giving an overview of the northern and southern hemispheres, respectively. This plate is the planisphere for the northern hemisphere. It worked alongside the plate showing the southern hemisphere to give an overview of the whole celestial sphere. Notably, these planispheres did not feature pictorial representations of the constellation figures, instead including only the prominent stars from each array. The circles and radial lines inscribed on the planisphere represent parallels and meridians respectively and serve to orient the user in the celestial coordinate system. However, to determine the position of a particular star with any degree of accuracy, the user would need to consult one of the constellation-specific plates.</p>


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