Abstract
Solarium was a small constellation with a confusing story that appeared and disappeared from charts in the span of about a generation during the mid-nineteenth century. It has been written that Solarium was introduced by Elijah Burritt in Atlas of the Heavens, an eight-page supplement to his Geography of the Heavens, published in various editions from about 1833 through the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Burritt repeated the figure in Atlas designed to illustrate the geography of the heavens (1835).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
“East from Horologium, between the head of Hydrus and the tail of Dorado” (Allen 1899).
- 2.
London: G. & W.B. Whittaker (1824).
- 3.
Bouvier (1858).
- 4.
Isaiah 38:4–8 “Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah: …‘This is the Lord’s sign to you that the Lord will do what he has promised: I will make the shadow cast by the sun go back the ten steps it has gone down on the stairway of Ahaz.’ So the sunlight went back the ten steps it had gone down.” (New International Version) A similar account is given in 2 Kings 20:8–11.
- 5.
“For as touching the sun-dial and the gnomon and the twelve divisions of the day, they were learnt by the Hellenes from the Babylonians.” Histories 2.109, trans. G.C. Macaulay.
- 6.
“ Berosus the Chaldean, was the inventor of the semicircle, hollowed in a square, and inclined according to the climate.” De Architectura 9.8.1, trans. J. Gwilt.
- 7.
Natural History 7.212–5.
- 8.
“The division of the day and the night each into 12 h is not ignored by anybody, but I think it was observed at Rome, only after the invention of the sun-dial.” De Die Natale XII, trans. W. Maude.
References
Allen, Richard Hinckley. 1899. Star Names: Their Lore And Meaning. New York: Dover.
Bouvier, Hannah M. 1858. Bouvier’s Familiar astronomy; or, An introduction to the study of the heavens. Philadelphia: Sower, Barnes, & Potts.
Burritt, Elijah Hinsdale. 1833. The geography of the heavens; or, Familiar instructions for finding the visible stars and constellations accompanied by a celestial atlas. Hartford, Conn.: F.J. Huntington.
Burritt, Elijah Hinsdale. 1835. Atlas designed to illustrate the geography of the heavens. New York: Huntington and Savage.
Jamieson, Alexander. 1822. A celestial atlas: comprising a systematic display of the heavens in a series of thirty maps: illustrated by scientific description of their contents and accompanied by catalogues of the stars and astronomical exercises. London: G. & W.B. Whittaker.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Barentine, J.C. (2016). Solarium. In: Uncharted Constellations. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27619-9_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27619-9_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-27618-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-27619-9
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)