Abstract
The varieties of astronomical mapping are presented, starting with maps of the celestial sphere. Important map projections are considered, including gnomonic projections which are particularly good for star charts. When telescopes arrived, astronomers began to make maps of other worlds, including influential maps of Mars by Schiaparelli and maps of the Moon made during the Apollo era. I discuss map projections specifically designed for Mars and the Moon. Map distortions are examined: area, local shape, flexion, lopsidedness, distances, and boundary cuts. Spacetime maps include Martin Kruskal’s map of the interior of the black hole. Our map of the Sloan Great Wall of Galaxies , 1.37 billion light-years long, and the famous WMAP satellite map of the cosmic microwave background are described. Finally, my “Map of the Universe” displays everything in the universe on a logarithmic map: from the Earth to manmade satellites; to the Moon, Sun, and planets; to nearby stars; to our Milky Way, and other galaxies in the Local Group and Virgo supercluster; to the distant galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey; and finally, to the Cosmic Microwave Background, the most distant thing we can see.
Keywords
I am teaching a new course this year at Princeton University called “Mapping the Universe.” Astronomical maps have had a long and interesting history, but are of particular interest today. When Mercator made his great map of the Earth in 1569 it was interesting not only because it portrayed local shapes and compass directions correctly, but also because for the first time it was able to show the coastlines of North America and South America more or less correctly. Today, astronomical maps are able to capture, for the first time, the entire visible universe on a single map. This has been due to the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) satellite which measures the cosmic microwave background, the most distant thing we can observe, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (for a description see York et al. 2000) which has mapped the locations of a million galaxies in space. However let me start my story nearer the beginning.
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Gott, J.R. (2017). Mapping the Universe. In: Brunn, S., Dodge, M. (eds) Mapping Across Academia. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1011-2_5
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