I collect star atlasas, and I much prefer the clean and elegant serenity of clear symbology and uncluttered sky to the fantastical creatures and deities of mythology. Granted, multiply sized monochrome dots and a simple grid can be rather monotonous, but many modern star maps have achieved a balance of clarity, elegance and communication that succeeds without artificial decoration and magical bestiaries or voluptous engraved nymphs. The modern star chart, often in color, manages to transmit the ultimate beauty of the cosmos, just what is actually there, in all its variety and grandeur, is all the beauty we could possibly need.

For sheer color and a symbology so instinctive it is still copied today, you can't go wrong with the Becvar atlases of the immediate post-war period. Although now obsolete, the Sky Publishing edition of Skalnate Pleso Atlas of the Heavens is still on my home coffee table as a sheer esthetic item. And his Atlases Borealis, Eclipticalis and Australis, now sadly out of print, still are in great demand among amateurs because they are so useful at the telescope. Will Tirion in the Netherlands built on this tradition and has given us several wonderful atlases that beat Becvar in usefulness, if not necessarily in beauty. And for an example of the perfect melding of the Uranographer's and bookmaker's art, plus the use of human design guiding computer plotting, the most beautiful, most visually appealing, atlas ever made (even in plain b&W) is the modern first edition of Uranometria 2000.0. The second edition of this work corrects some serious technical problems, and provides better data, it is clearly a scientific improvement, but it simply isn't as pretty.

And pretty is what it's all about. In this day of automated telescopes, online planetaria and computerized atlases, the bound star atlas is rapidly becoming obsolete. But for the armchair star sailor, opening up an elegantly bound book, smelling the acid-free, dew-resistant paper, and contemplating the black dots on a white background, the obscure catalogue designations and
Greek letters, the abstract symbology of unimaginable objects...that beats gods and critters and copper engravings of naked ladies hands down.