Citation
Taveira, Mariana Vale (2025) Dot, Letter, Legend: Johann Bayer's Graphic Code. Other, California Institute of Technology. doi:10.7907/aw8c-0858. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechThesis:08122025-212632192
Abstract
[Introduction] In the Western imagination, the night sky long oscillated between myth and measurement. When the tenth-century Persian astronomer al-Sufi redrafted Ptolemy’s star list in his Book of Fixed Stars (964 CE), he paired naked-eye observations with richly painted constellation figures, proving that pictures could do double duty as both art and empirical record [1]. Late-medieval scholars echoed that hybrid style – Hyginus’s woodcuts (1482) filled the heavens with decorative heroes [2], while Alessandro Piccolomini’s De le Stelle Fisse (1540) spotlighted positional grids [3]. Yet none of these charts provided a visual idiom robust enough to anchor the new Copernican vision of a three-dimensional celestial sphere. That idiom arrived in 1603, when the Augsburg lawyer-uranographer Johann Bayer published Uranometria [4].
| Item Type: | Thesis (Other) |
|---|---|
| Subject Keywords: | Alexander P. and Adelaide F. Hixon Prize for Writing; Hixon Prize for Writing; Hixon Writing Center |
| Degree Grantor: | California Institute of Technology |
| Division: | Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Major Option: | Philosophy |
| Awards: | Alexander P. and Adelaide F. Hixon Prize for Writing, 2025. |
| Thesis Availability: | Restricted to Caltech community only |
| Research Advisor(s): |
|
| Group: | Alexander P. and Adelaide F. Hixon Prize for Writing, Hixon Writing Center |
| Thesis Committee: |
|
| Defense Date: | 8 June 2025 |
| Record Number: | CaltechThesis:08122025-212632192 |
| Persistent URL: | https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechThesis:08122025-212632192 |
| DOI: | 10.7907/aw8c-0858 |
| Default Usage Policy: | No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided. |
| ID Code: | 17617 |
| Collection: | CaltechTHESIS |
| Deposited By: | Joanna Poon |
| Deposited On: | 13 Aug 2025 23:25 |
| Last Modified: | 13 Aug 2025 23:25 |
Thesis Files
|
PDF
- Final Version
Restricted to Caltech community only See Usage Policy. 2MB |
Repository Staff Only: item control page


