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Uranometria is a star atlas produced by Johann Bayer. It was published in Augsburg in 1603 by Christoph Mang ( Christophorus Mangus)Christoph Mang was printing books at Augsburg with dates ranging 1567–1617, according to Johns Hopkins Library catalog ; Uranometria is the most famous work issuing from his press. under the full title Uranometria: omnium asterismorum continens schemata, nova methodo delineata, aereis laminis expressa (from Latin: Uranometria, containing charts of all the , drawn by a new method and engraved on copper plates). The word "uranometria", , literally translates to "measuring the heavens".
It was the first atlas to cover the entire celestial sphere.
Each plate includes a grid for accurately determining the position of each star to fractions of a degree. The positions used by Bayer to create the Uranometria were taken from the expanded 1,005-star catalog of Tycho Brahe. Brahe's expanded list had circulated in manuscript since 1598 and was available in graphic form on the celestial globes of Petrus Plancius, Hondius, and Willem Blaeu. It was first published in tabular form in Johannes Kepler's Rudolphine Tables of 1627.
Uranometria introduced the convention of labelling stars by Greek and Latin letters, known as Bayer designations, a system still in use today. Star Tales – Bayer letters
The use of Brahe's catalog allowed for considerably better accuracy than Ptolemy's somewhat limited star listing. The stars listed in Uranometria total over 1,200, indicating that Brahe's catalog was not the only source of information used. Bayer took the southern star positions and constellation names for the 49th plate from the catalog of Dutch navigator Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser, who corrected the older observations of Amerigo Vespucci and Andrea Corsali, as well as the report of Pedro de Medina. Uranometria contains many more stars than did any previous star atlas, though the exact number is disputed as not all stars on the charts are labeled.
The stars of each constellation are shown overlain on an engraved image of the subject of the constellation. Convention imagined the human figures facing the Earth, so that previous celestial maps, oriented as though the viewer were looking down upon the celestial sphere from the outside, showed the figures from behind. For many of the human figures, Mair retained this convention of illustrating the figure from behind—but Bayer's projection showed stars as seen from the Earth looking up. Thus, the orientation appears in mirror reflection from Ptolemy's description, leading to some confusion in the literal meanings of certain star names: names referring to the "right shoulder" and the like are incorrect from the perspective of some of Uranometria illustrations.
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