Sky & Telescope - February 2023 - 28

SHIPS: PRISMA ARCHIVO / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; CHART DETAILS:
RAY HARRIS PRIVATE COLLECTION (4)
Celestial Cartography
German astronomer Jacob Bartsch in 1624, German-Dutch
cartographer Andreas Cellarius in his highly celebrated atlas
of 1660 (shown on pages 24 and 25), and French cartographer
Augustin Royer in 1679. Tigris Fluvius was rendered with an
additional tributary, the Euphrates, in Cellarius's atlas.
In 1687, Hevelius's great celestial atlas, Firmamentum
TRADE ON THE WAVES This painting, dated 1677, shows the
returning fleet of the Dutch East India Company. Founded in 1602, the
Company employed cartographers such as Petrus Plancius, who helped
create maps to facilitate expanding trade routes through previously
uncharted waters. Toward the end of the 17th century, it had grown to
become the richest private company in the world and boasted nearly 200
ships and some 50,000 employees.
The two most northern of Plancius's six lost constellations
celebrated important rivers. Tigris Fluvius meandered its way
from Pegasus to Ophiuchus then flowed south of Cygnus and
Lyra (but north of Delphinus, Sagitta, and Aquila). Another
river, Jordanus Fluvius, originated from its sources in " Jor "
and " Dan " under the tail of Ursa Major, then flowed south of
the Great Bear and around to its snout. Many globes and planispheres
portrayed these two rivers, including those published
by Strasbourg astronomer Isaac Habrecht II in 1621 and 1628,
LOST AND FOUND The Cellarius atlas plates were purchased by
another publisher, who reprinted the atlas in 1708. Then, in 1804, an
Ottoman publisher produced planispheres modeled on those in the Cellarius
atlas, presented below. These charts provided a final (but obscure)
reprise for the lost Plancius constellations of 1612.
Apes
Sobiescianum, was published. The work presented several new
constellations, seven of which survive to the present day.
He adopted all 14 of Plancius's southern constellations that
were included in Bayer's 1603 atlas, as well as Camelopardalis
and Monoceros. However, Hevelius abandoned Tigris
Fluvius in favor of his own new constellation, Vulpecula.
Likewise, he dropped Jordanus Fluvius to make room for Leo
Minor and Lynx.
The Hevelius atlas, like Bayer's, was highly influential.
His new constellations battled with Plancius's rivers over the
next four decades, all appearing equally often. A handful of
planispheres and globes portrayed the rivers, including those
by Italian cartographer Vincenzo Coronelli in 1692 and 1693,
Jean Le Febure in 1700, Dutch printmaker Carel Allard in
1706, Vasilii O. Kipriyanoviji in 1707, and German globemaker
Johann Ludwig Andreae in 1724. The rivers were effectively
presented for the final time in a celestial atlas that Salzburg
cartographer Corbinianus Thomas published in 1730. But
they did have a revival of sorts in 1804 on a pair of obscure
Ottoman planispheres based on Cellarius's 1660 charts.
Of Roosters, Bees, and Flies
Planispheres in the Cellarius atlas of 1660 included the
remainder of the constellations Plancius introduced in
1612. However, with the exceptions of Camelopardalis
and Monoceros, that was to be their last hurrah. Gallus
(the Rooster) also appeared in the globes and planispheres
Habrecht published in 1621 and 1628, and in Bartsch's
Cancer Minor
28 FEBRUARY 2023 * SKY & TELESCOPE
Sky & Telescope - February 2023

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