Kanas Nick. Star Maps. History, Artistry and Cartography

Springer: New York, 2012. - 557 p. 2nd Edition
ISBN: 978-1-4614-0916-8
ISBN: 978-1-4614-0917-5 (eBook)
Springer–Praxis Books in Popular AstronomyPreface to Second Edition
Star Maps: History, Artistry, and Cartography was first published in 2007. A second printing, which was similar to the first except for a few minor editorial changes, came out in 2009. When faced with the need to print more books in 2011, the question was whether or not to publish a third printing or issue a brand new edition. After all, how much new material could there be in a book that was mainly historical and focused on a fairly discrete and specialized topic?
As it turned out, plenty! This second edition, published in 2012, contains over 50 new pages, has 44 new images (16 in color), and lists over 60 additional references, most of which come from primary sources. These changes are in part due to new material that has appeared in scholarly map and astronomy journals and specialty magazines. But in addition, I have responded to helpful recommendations from the reviewers of the first edition, not to mention comments made by people attending my lectures on the history of celestial cartography. And to be honest, I have purchased new prints for my collection and developed new sub-interests in the past few years that I wanted to include.
As a result, I have reread the entire first edition and made a number of editorial changes and updates. In Chapter 3, mention is made of the Neoplatonist Hypatia. In Chapter 4, Caspar Vopel rather than Gerard Mercator is credited with introducing the constellations Antinous and Coma Berenices on his celestial globe, and a figure showing Antinous has been added. In Chapter 6, a new Hevelius map replaces the former Figure 6.6. Significant additions have been made to Chapter 8, including new figures and text in the celestial globe, volvelle, telescope, planets, and Moon sections; mention of the Nebra sky disk and astronomer Thomas Harriot; and entirely new sections on asteroids, deep sky objects, playing card maps, and frontispieces and title pages. In Chapter 9, there is new material on colonial America and on astronomy writer Hannah Mary Bouvier. In Chapter 10, there are several new figures and new sections on astronomer Johann von Littrow and computerized star maps. A new Chapter 11 collects all the color figures into a single Color Plate Gallery. Corrections and updates also appear in the appendices.
Although much has been added to this second edition, not every recommended change was made. For example, some reviewers of the first edition suggested that I add material on prehistoric and indigenous sky maps. However, as I stated in the Preface to the first edition, the main focus of this book is the European sky mapping tradition, and to go beyond the cultures mentioned in Chapter 2 would take us too far afield. Similarly, the historical information in Chapters 3 and 4 was selected to be a primer for the reader to better understand the meaning of the sky maps described in subsequent chapters, not to be an exhaustive history of astronomy. For this, the reader is referred to the texts referenced in the chapter bibliographies.Preface to Second Edition
Foreword to First Edition
Preface to First EditionList of figures
List of tables
List of abbreviations and acronyms
1 What is a star map? 1
2 Non-European cosmology and constellation development 17
3 European cosmology 49
4 European constellation development 107
5 Early European star maps 133
6 The ‘‘Big Four’’ of the Golden Age of pictorial star maps 151
7 Other important star maps of the Golden Age 191
8 Special topics 225
9 Mapping the stars in early America 315
10 The transition to non-pictorial star maps 337
11 Color Plate Gallery 373
Appendices
A Collecting celestial maps and prints 465
B Supplementary reference catalog 473
C Indices of major constellation atlases 499
D The British Library ‘‘King’s’’ edition 509
E Glossary 511
Index 519