Look at that eagle! Courtesy of The Map HouseĪndreas Cellarius’s 1660 Harmonia Macrocosmica map illustrates this. Merrill Lynch’s map celebrating the moon landing. “Many of these early maps were astonishingly beautiful, partially because art and science were not considered separate fields in the 17th and 18th centuries, but rather two sides of the same coin,” say Beal and Roberts. Here, we see the premium that cartographers placed on these historic maps’ aesthetic qualities, beyond their scientific import. It also contains 17th-century star charts, lightboxes, and globes, along with a 19th-century brass model of the solar system and boldly designed educational charts used to illuminate constellations, eclipses, tides, and moon phases. Courtesy of The Map HouseĪlong with maps of the moon and the larger solar system, the exhibit boasts “rare lunar globes produced specially to celebrate the Moon landing in July 1969, an extraordinary 1872 solar system model by Henry Bryant, and a very curious French horoscope predictor ,” Beal and Roberts say.
“With the upcoming anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing and our wish to celebrate this magnificent achievement,” the exhibitors say, “we have been gathering more lunar material over the last few years to really piece together a graphic timeline of how the moon was mapped.” The 1963 USAF Lunar Wall Mosaic, used by NASA to navigate the moon six years later. Highlights from this treasure trove include maps of space signed by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin at the height of their NASA careers. In fact, The Map House’s entire collection of cartography, illustrating early astronomical curiosity and subsequent lunar exploration, is for sale. Air Force’s Aeronautical Chart and Information Center (ACIC), and … published by NASA.” “The exhibition features copper-engraved maps published in late 17th-century Europe, and maps … of the Apollo program, by the United States Geological Survey and the U. “We are very lucky that we have always had a fascinating selection of antique and vintage maps of the moon, stars, and what was known of the universe,” Beal and Roberts say. The Map House, the world’s oldest and largest antiquarian map dealer, has scores of these, from the Renaissance to the Cold War. Astronomers, for their part, were eager to prove their scientific prowess by drawing the most accurate maps. Royal patrons threw money behind celebrity astronomers, eager to fund exploration of the moon. The earliest space race, then, was about which country could build the most impressive observatory first. A pivotal 1669 map of the moon’s surface, drawn by Athanasius Kircher. And when telescopes were developed as an optical tool in the 17th century, Renaissance astronomers were able to make out stunning details-the Moon’s craters, Saturn’s rings, Jupiter’s moons-which allowed for the creation of maps that depicted not only planets and natural satellites, like the moon, but also the solar system as a whole. Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’ novel theory-that the solar system was, in fact, heliocentric and did not revolve around Earth (and man)-was aided by these diagrams. “The publication of these early maps coincided with a transformative moment in human history and some of the most important discoveries in astronomy,” say Mary Alice Beal and Charles Roberts of The Map House, who curated this cartographic history of the skies. The exhibit also documents how scientific knowledge improved over time-but also how the artistry of maps was lost a bit in the process. Now a new exhibit called The Mapping of the Moon: 1669-1969, on display through August 21 at The Map House in London, explores the history of lunar and celestial cartography, showing how these renderings brought far-off heavenly bodies into our orbit. For centuries, astronomers (and astrologers) chased knowledge about celestial bodies and their impact on Earth-and turned to cartography to map their findings for the public.Īthanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit priest and scholar, drew a map of the near side of the moon back in the 17th century-300 years before American astronauts would land there. Long before two countries raced to space and NASA began sending rovers to Mars, curiosity about the skies kept people up at night.
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