Celestial charts & astronomy

120 public-domain plates

Celestial cartography turned the night sky into a navigable map. Star atlases paired hard positional data — the coordinates of catalogued stars — with the mythological figures of the constellations, so a single plate served both the astronomer and the imagination. The finest are among the most coveted of all antique prints. This archive holds 120 public-domain plates in this tradition, spanning the 22th century BC to the 20th century.

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