Rey didn't know much about
celestial cartography or mechanics when he first decided to write books about the night sky, but he spent the next four years researching the subjects intensively.
"The
Celestial Cartography of Giovanni Vanosino da Varese." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 34 (1971): 336-37.
In this new overside facsimile edition, Dutch astronomer and historian Robert van Gent offers an introduction on the history of
celestial cartography and meticulously describes every single one of the 29 plates, providing a wealth of information on details that might otherwise be easy to overlook.
The priorities of
celestial cartography, it seems, prompted Hevelius and Lacaille to make molehills out of mountains.
It immediately had a profound influence on
celestial cartography, and it continued to influence astronomical research for more than a century thereafter.
More or less a contemporary of Ptolemy, he pioneered
celestial cartography and probably invented rectangular equatorial coordinates, but his star maps were lost in the 3rd century AD.
In The Sky Explored:
Celestial Cartography 1500-1800, historian Deborah Jean Warner summarized the themes at work in the newly invented constellations: unusual and fabulous animals, Biblical references, political tributes, and technical instruments.
Johann Bayer's epochal star atlas set the standard for scientific accuracy and artistic elegance in
celestial cartography that has endured to the present time.
Deborah Jean Warner, an expert on
celestial cartography and the author of The Sky Explored (1979), analyzed the Plancius material and credited Plancius with the capture of the first unicorn for the menagerie overhead.
Celestial cartography has come a long way since Sky Atlas 2000.0 appeared almost 20 years ago.
The improvement in the layout of the stars so astonished Tirion that he developed a new interest -
celestial cartography.
The modern age of
celestial cartography is rapidly bringing this all-embracing picture into focus.