Jamieson, Alexander. A celestial atlas: comprising a systemic display of the heavens in a series of thirty maps. London, 1822, pl. 25.

Further Out: Recent Acquisitions of Celestial Atlases

An Exhibition of Rare Books from the Collection of the Linda Hall Library And a Supplement to Out of This World

Green, Jacob. Astronomical Recreations: or Sketches of the Relative Position and Mythological History of the Constellations. Philadelphia, 1824.

Green stated explicitly that he was trying to write a book to help ordinary people identify stars and constellations in the night sky, and for that reason he has kept it simple, showing just one or two constellations at a time, and depicting only the brightest stars, down to fourth magnitude. As the basis for his star plates, he used Bode’s Uranographia, but since Bode’s plates were so huge, he had to reduce them considerably. In the process, he left out most of Bode’s stars, all of Bode’s nebulae, and many of Bode’s peripheral constellations. And he added a touch of color. For comparison, below are the plates of Aquarius and Capricorn form Green’s atlas and Bode’s Uranographia.

Aquarius and Capricorn. Image source: Green, Jacob. Astronomical Recreations; or Sketches of the Relative Position and Mythological History of the Constellations. Philadelphia: A. Finley, 1824, pl. 14.

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Aquarius and Capricorn. Image source: Bode, Johann Elert. Uranographia. Berlin: apud Autorim, 1801, pl. 16.

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The plate of Sagittarius and Scorpio (below) is unusual in that it shows the two constellations completely. Because these two constellations lie mostly below the ecliptic, a conventional plate of the zodiac will show only the top half of Sagittarius and Scorpio; this is the case with all of the atlases based on Flamsteed (which also show Sagittarius and Scorpio on separate plates).

Sagittarius and Scorpio. Image source: Green, Jacob. Astronomical Recreations; or Sketches of the Relative Position and Mythological History of the Constellations. Philadelphia: A. Finley, 1824, pl. 13.

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