Johann Bayer — In Snatched Hours — Book

The book

In 1603 a lawyer in Augsburg, Johann Bayer, published an atlas of the whole sky: fifty-one copper plates engraved by Alexander Mair, with the stars of Tycho Brahe’s catalogue and some five hundred more that Bayer placed himself, by eye. He named the stars of each figure with letters, and astronomers still use them: Betelgeuse is still α Orionis.

This book shows eighteen of the plates, in the atlas’s order, each facing the same sky calculated for 1601 from a modern catalogue and laid on Bayer’s own graduation. With an introduction on Bayer, Mair and Tycho, and on the astronomer who weighed the atlas in 1842.

Why this book is different

The plates are online, free. What this book adds is the sky itself, beside each one: every star where it really was in 1601, set on the degrees Bayer engraved around his frame, with nothing fitted to the stars. What remains between an engraved star and the real one belongs to the plate, to Mair, to Bayer or to Tycho.

Six plates carry their story: the star in Cassiopeia that is no longer there; the new star in the Swan that still carries Bayer’s letter, P Cygni; Orion, engraved from behind; an error that travels from star to star in the Eagle; the sailors who brought Bayer the southern sky. And the four plates that Friedrich Argelander measured in 1842, measured again: three of the four agree with him within about a minute of arc.

The object

A hardcover book, printed on Mohawk Superfine: a 120 gsm uncoated art paper with a soft matte surface, heavier than a magazine page and without the shine of a photo book. The cover is matte-laminated. A4, 68 pages, in English.

It is printed to order in the USA when you buy it, one copy at a time.

Plates from the copy of the Uranometria in the ETH-Bibliothek Zürich (Rar 8931), e-rara, public domain; Argelander’s treatise from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The calculated skies are Métrica’s. Published independently by Métrica; not affiliated with the institutions credited.