Solar System Maps ― From Antiquity to the Space Age

This volume tells the fascinating story of Man's conceptualization of the solar system from the earliest times, when star maps represented what could be seen to the naked eye, to the modern age, when powerful telescopes and probes afford fresh insights.

Dr. Nick Kanas is an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco. He has been collecting antiquarian star maps for over 30 years. He is a member of several map collector societies and has lectured on the history of celestial cartography at scientific and non-scientific meetings of organizations such as the Adler Planetarium, the Lick Observatory, and the Sydney (Australia) Observatory, and annual meetings of the International Conference on the History of Cartography, the Society for the History of Astronomy, the Flamsteed Astronomical Society in Greenwich, U.K. and the California Map Society. He has written articles on this subject for a number of journals and magazines including 'Sky & Telescope' and the 'Journal of the International Map Collector's Society.' Nick is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (London). The first edition of his title 'Star Maps' (Springer, 2007) was well-reviewed and went through two printings. He continues to write and lecture on antiquarian star maps for various groups, including professional conferences and meetings of amateur astronomers and map collectors.