Free Download PDF Solar System Maps - From Antiquity to the Space Age By Nick Kanas

Sinopsis

In 1543, Nicolaus Copemicus iuvenled the solar system. "Hold on!" you say. Surely the solar system had been there forever, and Copemicus didn't just iuvent it. Yes and no! What Copemicus had revealed and iuvented was the arrangement of the planets-a stunningly new way of mappiug them. He revolutionized the way humankind would conceive of the planets as a system, controlled by the Sun. "Thus iudeed," Copernicus

wrote, "the sun, as though sealed on a royal throne, governs the family of planets revolving around it."

Nick Kanas has documented this revolutionary shift iu his ingeniously illustrated album of solar system images, all historical even though the modern views, ''postcards from space", are scarcely a few decades old. Joining the pictures is a rich commentary that poiuts out subtle details and places them iu a developiug astronomical context. To those of us impressed with the rapidity of change iu the 21st Century, it may seem odd that the authors and illustrators of the 16th Century were so slow to switch their astronomical imagery iu the years followiug the publication of Copemicus's epoch-makiug work. But the heliocentric system appeared to attack common sense. Beautiful as it may have appeared to cartographers who could map the heaveuly spheres with circles conveniently ringiug the Sun, the idea of living on a rapidly spiuning ball hurtliug around the Sun seemed totally ridiculous. Surely the Earth's inhabitants would be spun off iuto space!

There were alternative views. Perhaps the planets did circle the Sun, while the Sun itself carried the entire retinue around a fixed Earth. A theory of this sort was seriously proposed by the great Danish observer, Tycho Brahe. And this, too, is dncumented iu Kanas's fasciuating collection. But by the mid-1700s, such alternative views, along with the ancient geocentric system, were quaint has-beens.

In 1608, the telescope arrived on the scene. Galileo Galilei promptly converted this carnival toy iuto a scientific discovery machine, and soon there were planets with their moons, new worlds to map and depict. And more charts and maps to collect, for Nick Kanas is an astute collector, always searching for new worlds to conquer. So his quest has taken him from worldwide ancient views to popularizations iu a growiug America, where curiosity about the heavens and ever-bigger telescopes caught the public imagiuation. Surely some of that unbounded enthusiasm has fueled the Space Age, with new and different ways of depicting the solar system. Images from a decade ago are already history. It's a great trip! Get your ticket here!

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