Comments on: Antique Celestial Maps

Antique Celestial Maps

Gator — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:40:30 -0800

The U.S. Naval Observatory Library features high-res scans of images from antique books dealing with astronomy and navigation. Wallpapers, ahoy!

By: belling

belling — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:59:46 -0800

Thanks Gator, these are really beautiful. They make great desktops with the color inverted in Gimp.

By: marxchivist

marxchivist — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 19:01:47 -0800

coolstuffthanks

By: marxchivist

marxchivist — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 19:03:44 -0800

I know it was done years ago, but I love the liberal use of cellophane tape on things like this.

By: zennie

zennie — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 19:09:18 -0800

Very nice. Amazing how much careful work went into those engravings. But don't forget the nice picture of Cheney's house.

By: zennie

zennie — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 19:16:57 -0800

And many other photos in the photo collection.

By: porpoise

porpoise — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 19:20:12 -0800

Transit of Venus Plates from 1882. Great find, Gator - and I hope they're true to their word and keep updating that page! belling - my word, aged paper's negative colour is a really cool 'night sky' blue

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 19:23:28 -0800

Great post. Thanks Those interested in this atlas might also be interested in the Firmamentum Sobiescianum of Johann Hevelius^ of 1690. It's the earliest example of this kind of work (called uranographies), and it's also at USNO. some more examples of Hevelius can be found at Hubble. Hevelius's drawings are also available in Stellarium, a modern planetarium program. See also John Bode's Uranographia of 1801, the artwork of which has become the archetype for celestial drawing. Bode also did a version of the Flamsteed atlas which is the subject of one of the scans referenced in the fpp links.

By: redsparkler

redsparkler — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 19:28:56 -0800

Oooh...check out the Curious Mathematical Forms.

By: Busithoth

Busithoth — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 21:03:23 -0800

[holy crap this is good]

By: tiamat

tiamat — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 21:33:49 -0800

wowzers. DownThemAll is serving its purpose tonight.

By: LeeJay

LeeJay — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 21:42:04 -0800

Woahoho this is good stuff!

By: squirrel

squirrel — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 22:09:06 -0800

[Awesome]

By: spock

spock — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 08:37:29 -0800

T H I S I S O U T S T A N D I N G You've just provided the raw materials for my homebrew labels. Thanks!

By: atom128

atom128 — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 16:50:18 -0800

awesome. I have some scans like this on my flickr account here:

By: HTuttle

HTuttle — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 21:16:19 -0800

Wanna come up and see my etchings?

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 22:32:47 -0800

Entirely cool. Thanks!

By: Tzarius

Tzarius — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 03:16:28 -0800

Anyone else having trouble connecting to usno.navy.mil?

By: Gator

Gator — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 18:53:20 -0800

You've just provided the raw materials for my homebrew labels. That's a really awesome idea. (I thought I already said this, but apparently not.) Also, thanks for the additional links, Pastabagel.