Ball, Robert Stawell “An Atlas of Astronomy” [D. Appleton, 1892]

BALL, Robert Stawell. An Atlas of Astronomy: A Series of Seventy-Two Plates, with Introduction and Index.

New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1892. First U.S. edition. 8.5” x 7.5”, ix + 57pp + 72 plates + 17pp index. Publisher's blue cloth decorated in silver on upper board and spine. Complete with all plates. Light rubbing and shelf wear to binding, a few scattered spots of foxing, and occasional contemporary pencil annotations identifying lunar features. Binding sound and text clean apart from a few penciled notations. Very Good.

Issued as a companion to the popular astronomical writings of Sir Robert Stawell Ball, Lowndean Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, An Atlas of Astronomy presents seventy-two detailed plates illustrating the solar system, lunar geography, eclipses, comets, nebulae, stellar clusters, planetary surfaces, and other astronomical phenomena. The atlas was designed to make the rapidly expanding discoveries of nineteenth-century astronomy accessible to a general audience while retaining a level of scientific accuracy useful to students and amateur observers. Particularly striking are the lunar charts, eclipse diagrams, and celestial photographs reproduced from contemporary observations.

The work occupies an interesting place in the history of popular science, appearing during a period when photography, spectroscopy, and increasingly powerful telescopes were transforming humanity's understanding of the universe. Complete copies are encountered far less frequently than Ball's more common narrative works, and the elaborate silver-stamped binding gives the volume strong visual appeal on the shelf.