Beschreibung:

BODE, Johann Elert (1747-1826). Uranographia, sive astrorum descriptio . Berlin: by the author, 1801.
BODE, Johann Elert (1747-1826). Uranographia, sive astrorum descriptio . Berlin: by the author, 1801. 2° (635 x 490mm). Double-page engraved title, 20 double-page engraved celestial maps, all mounted on stubs, extra-illustrated with Graves’s ‘Lunar Orrery’ double-plate, priced in manuscript seven shillings and six. (Title and verso of last leaf a little dusty, small spot in one plate, one plate creased along the fold, margin of some plates very lightly discoloured, extra plate just trimmed by the binder along one edge.) Contemporary half roan (boards detached, spine defective, corner leather lost, extremities rubbed, front free endpaper detached and torn). FIRST EDITION OF ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT CELESTIAL ATLASES , ‘the most extensive and last great atlas of its kind’ (Warner); this copy EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED with Graves’s striking ‘Lunar Orrery’ plate (1802). Bode’s beautiful production set a new benchmark in the field, and proved itself a true successor to the great atlases of Bayer, Hevelius and Flamsteed. ‘Until the later nineteenth century Bode's remained the most comprehensive celestial atlas ever published, the first to attempt a complete representation of all 15,000 naked-eye stars’ (Whitfield). Bode played an important role in the development of astronomy in Germany, becoming Royal Astronomer and a member of the Berlin Academy. He gave the name Uranus to Herschel's newly discovered planet. His atlas is noted for a number of stars lying outside of the constellations, and he proposed the concept of boundaries to these constellations that would, with later adjustments, become ‘fundamental to astronomy’ (Whitfield). Warner 7; Whitfield, p.104.