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A striking star chart centered on Gemini [The Twins], marvelously engraved and delicately colored. Shows the featured constellations in color with neighboring stars and constellations without color. Jamieson's work is one of the finest of its kind in the early 19th century. Alexander Jamieson published A Celestial Atlas Comprising A System Display of the Heaven. This work was published in London by G & W.B Wittaker, T. Caddell and N. Hailes in 1822.
Gemini are the twins Castor and Polloux in Roman mythology. They form part of the larger myth in Pan Indo-European culture of the Divine Horse Twins, a recurring story throughout many cultures. In Greek tradition, they joined the Argonauts and later helped rescue Helen; the constellation supposedly represents the immortality Pollux shared with his mortal half-twin Castor.
Includes a colored Gemini and uncolored parts of the constellations of Lynx, Telescopium Herschelii [obsolete, meaning Herschel's telescope], Auriga, Perseus, Taurus, Orion, Monoceros, Canis Minor, Hydra, and Cancer. Includes a line showing the ecliptic positions in various months, with Gemini centered on July. This forms part of a marvelously colored set of Jamieson works on the Zodiac signs.
This edition of Jamieson's work was later used for Urania's Mirror, a collection of star cards with punched holes so one could line them up with the constellations.
