Phaenomena: Doppelmayr's Celestial Atlas
Giles Sparrow and Martin Rees
Showcasing Johann Doppelmayr’s magnificent 1742 map of the cosmos, Atlas Coelestis, this spectacular guide to the heavens is also a superb introduction to the fundamentals and history of astronomy.
Charting constellations, planets, comets and moons, Doppelmayr’s Atlas presents the ideas and discoveries of many famous and influential astronomers, including Copernicus, Riccioli, Kepler, Newton and Halley, in intricate colour plates that interweave annotated diagrams and tables with figurative drawings and ornamental features. Here, you can appreciate the beauty of those exquisite astronomical and cosmographical plates and comprehend the details, which are also presented in step-by-step deconstructed form. Astronomer Giles Sparrow elucidates the scientific ideas inherent in each plate, expertly decoding and analysing the complex information contained in them and placing Doppelmayr’s sumptuous Atlas in the context of the ground-breaking discoveries made during the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods.
A spectacular, revelatory celestial compendium to the cosmos, Phaenomena expands on and explains Doppelmayr’s original, awe-inspiring Atlas and reflects upon its influence on the development of the science of astronomy to the present day.
Giles Sparrow is a writer and editor specializing in astronomy and physics. He studied astronomy at University College London and science communication at Imperial College and is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. He has written for books, magazines and multi-volume encyclopaedias on a wide range of topics, from cutting-edge space technology to the history of science, and from distant constellations to ancient archaeology. He regularly contributes to magazines, including All About Space and Sky at Night, and is the author of the bestselling Cosmos, A History of the Universe in 21 Stars, Spaceflight and What Shape is Space? A primer for the 21st century, from Thames & Hudson’s The Big Idea series.
Martin Rees is an astrophysicist and cosmologist, and the United Kingdom’s Astronomer Royal. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 2004 to 2012 and President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010. In 2012 he co-founded the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, an interdisciplinary research centre dedicated to studying and reducing the threat of global catastrophes.
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