Uranography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Uranography (celestial cartography) is the branch of astronomy concerned with mapping the stars, galaxies, or other celestial bodies.
Uranography comes from the Greek ouranos (sky) + -graphy (writing about a specified subject).
The history of the constellations in the sky is as old as mankind itself. From the beginning, people let their fantasy run free when they looked up at the star-sprinkled night sky. Soon they started creating figures out of those dots of light, that always seemed to be in the same places in relation to each other: hunters, bears, lions and dogs. The 12 well-known constellations of the zodiac, the constellations that the sun passes through during her yearly path, probably originate from the old Babylon.
In later centuries many of the old constellations were given new names, Europeans used names based on the stories from Greek mythology: Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Perseus and many more. The one of first serious inventories of the sky was made by the Greek Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus), halfway the second century. His work contains a list of 48 constellations, that are still used today and the names can be found on modern star maps. In addition, several other peoples named various groupings of stars. The Chinese also drew collections of stars on sky maps during ancient times.
Because civilizations in the northern hemisphere could not see the part of the sky around the southern celestial pole, their maps lacked any constellations from this region. The constellations we now know in this part of the sky came from the 16th, 17th and 18th century during the era of European exploration. Many were invented by the Dutch cartographer-theologian Petrus Plancius, based on the observations of the Dutch seafarers Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman, and the French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille. Some interesting star atlases from this period are Uranometria by Johann Bayer (1603), Firmamentum Sobiescianum Sive Uranographia, by Johannes Hevelius (1687), the Atlas Coelestis by John Flamsteed (1729) and the Uranographia by Johann Elert Bode (1801). However, these Europeans were not the first map the southern sky since maps including this region were first available during the Ming Dyansty.
On the old sky maps, the emphasis was on the classical constellation figures, which dominated the stars. Sometimes the stars were completely absent. After the invention of the telescope this slowly changed. Stars now gained more priority and the drawn, classical figures become less prominent and eventually they completely disappeared from the star maps. More attention was given to the accurate positions of stars and objects. Pioneer work in this field was done by the German astronomer Friedrich Argelander. In 1875 he published a catalog with positions of 325,000 stars, measured from behind a telescope by himself and a group of assistants. Using the catalogue, a series of star maps was created. Just a coordinate grid and stars; nothing else was shown. The work became known as the Bonner Durchmusterung. It was unique until 1966 when a comparable work was published: the S.A.O. Star Catalogue plus the first computer-plotted atlas, the S.A.O. Star Atlas. In the 1980s and the 1990s several large star catalogs were compiled, such as the Hubble and the Hipparcos/Tycho catalogs, based on the observations of space telescopes.
Over the past century many photographic star atlases have been created and published. The best known example is probably the Palomar Sky Survey. But also more affordable photographic atlases like the Falkauer Atlas and Atlas Stellarum 1950.0 by the German amateur astronomer Hans Vehrenberg.
A few of the best-known hand-drawn star atlases for the serious amateur are Norton's Star Atlas, by Arthur Norton, Atlas Coeli Skalnate Pleso, by Dr. Antonin Becvar, and their successors Norton's 2000.0, edited by Ian Ridpath, and Sky Atlas 2000.0 by Wil Tirion.
[edit] Sources
- Uranography: A Brief Overview, by Wil Tirion. Used by permission.
- Science & Civilisation In China: Volume 3: Mathematics & The Sciences Of The Heavens & Earth; Joseph Needham, Wang Ling
