Uranography. calf

For a long time atlases of the starry sky contained, in addition to images of stars, graphical figures of constellations. This was dictated not only by the tradition or the aesthetic sense of the authors, but also by the astronomical practice of that time: the coordinates of the stars in the sky were fixed through a verbal description of their position in the figures of the characters of the constellations. The atlases of the starry sky were preceded by illustrative images of constellations, mainly of a mythological nature. Despite the sometimes outstanding expressiveness of the figures depicted, these publications cannot be considered astronomical works: the accuracy of drawing the constellations was inferior even to the accuracy achieved with the verbal description adopted in the works of ancient astronomers.