About These Drawings

The engravings come from Urania's Mirror; or, a View of the Heavens — a boxed set of 32 hand-coloured cards published in London in 1824, engraved by Sidney Hall.

Peep-hole magicEach card had holes punched at the star positions, sized by brightness. Hold a card up to a candle and the constellation glows at you — an 1820s planetarium for the parlour.

A mysterious authorThe set was credited only to “a lady” for nearly two centuries; research in 1994 identified the Rev. Richard Rouse Bloxam, an assistant master at Rugby School.

The older traditionThe figures descend from Bayer's Uranometria (1603) and Hevelius — who drew the sky mirror-reversed, as if viewed from outside the celestial sphere, the way a god would see it.

Dead constellationsLook closely and you'll find figures that no longer exist: Antinous under Aquila's wings, Gloria Frederici beside Andromeda, a hot-air balloon near Aquarius, Noctua the owl on Hydra's tail. The IAU's cut left them off the final 88 — extinct constellations.