Suppose you could get hold of a copy of Harmonia Macroscosmica, the famous 17th-century celestial atlas by Dutch cartographer Andreas Cellarius, for just $125. Would you hesitate for even the briefest moment? Probably not. So why be concerned over the price of a magnificent facsimile edition of this splendid atlas? In a sense, its even better than the original, for it contains valuable background information and numerous magnified portions of the colorful plates. Buying this book is a no-brainer for anyone with an interest in the history of astronomy.
You can find illustrations from Harmonia Macrocosmica in the history chapters of almost every introductory astronomy book. Cellarius depicted the worldviews of Ptolemy, Nicholas Copernicus, and Tycho Brahe, but his magnum opus also contains stunning albeit less-well-known representations of terrestrial and celestial coordinate systems, the zodiac, the phases of the Moon, and the motions of the planets. In this new 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.
Van Gent also delves into the history of Cellarius himself, of whom little was known until recently. Born in Germany in 1596, Cellarius moved to the Netherlands in the early 1620s, where he worked as a schoolmaster. His Atlas Coelestis, seu Harmonia Macrocosmica appeared in 1660 as the seventh volume of a world-atlas series by Johannes Janssonius in Amsterdam. Plans for a second volume of Harmonia Macrocosmica, with information about eclipses and recent revelations of astronomical telescopes, never materialized. Cellarius died in 1665.
My favorite plates are 22 and 23, which show the northern and southern hemispheres according to the German lawyer and scholar Julius Schiller, who replaced the pagan constellations from Greek mythology with Christian alternatives (April issue, page 47). For example, Cygnus, the Swan, was the Holy Cross and the zodiac consisted of the 12 apostles. Other impressive plates show Earths globe surrounded by a richly decorated but transparent celestial sphere. The facsimile edition concludes with a glossary and comprehensive descriptions of constellations and star names.
During the official presentation of this remarkable book in November 2006 in Amsterdam, the beautifully hand-colored 1660 edition from the citys university library (used to produce the facsimile) was on display behind glass. I would certainly be willing to spend much more than $125 to obtain the original. But the oversize Taschen edition is by far the best available alternative I can imagine.
The Finest Atlas of the Heavens: Harmonia Macrocosmica of 1660
Robert H. van Gent (Taschen, 2006). 240 pages. ISBN-13 978-3-8228-5290-3 (text in English, German, and French); ISBN-13 978-3-8228-1558-8 (text in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese). $125.