Atlas Coelestis


The Atlas Coelestis is a star atlas published posthumously in 1729, based on observations made by the First Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed.
The Atlas – the largest that ever had been published and the first comprehensive telescopic star catalogue and companion celestial atlas – contains 26 maps of the major constellations visible from Greenwich, with drawings made in the Rococo style by James Thornhill. It also presents two planispheres designed by Abraham Sharp.

History

The first stellar atlas based in telescopic observations, the Atlas Coelestis was published only ten years after the death of Flamsteed, by his widow, assisted by Joseph Crosthwait and Abraham Sharp. It was preceded by the opus "Stellarum inerrantium Catalogus Britannicus".
One of Flamsteed's main motivations to produce the Atlas, was to correct the representation of the figures of the constellations, as made by Bayer in his "Uranometria". Bayer represented the figures viewed from behind, which reversed the placement of stars and created unnecessary confusion.
The publication enjoyed immediate success, becoming the standard reference for professional astronomers for nearly a century. Even so, three objections have been raised regarding it: the high price, great size and low artistic quality.
This led Dr. John Bevis to try to improve the Atlas. In 1745, he produced the "Uranographia Britannica", with smaller dimensions, updated with observations and more artistic pictures. However, this atlas was never officially published and at the present, there are only 16 known copies.

The ''Atlas Fortin-Flamsteed''

Finally, the changes in the positions of stars, led to an update made in the 1770s by the French engineer Jean Nicolas Fortin, supervised by the astronomers Le Monnier and Messier, from the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris.
The new version, called Atlas Fortin-Flamsteed, had 1/3 of the size of the original, but kept the same table structure. There is also some artistic retouching to some illustrations.
The names of the constellations are in French and the Atlas included some nebulae discovered after the death of Flamsteed.
In 1795 it was published in an updated version, produced by Mechain and Lalande, with new constellations and many more nebulae.