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| Star Spangled Globes Fourth of July, 2001 |
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Q: George, we all are familiar with world globes, but what is a celestial globe?
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 Click image for full description and enlargement |
A celestial globe, as the name suggestions, is a globe of the stars and of constellations. Constellations are groups of identifiable stars, including the 12 signs of the zodiac, identified in ancient Greece and Rome as mythological classical gods, goddesses, and animals. The celestial globe was developed for people interested in astronomy to use to visualize the relative location of constellations in the night sky. |
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Here is a charming pair of American 19th Century globes by Gilman Joslin (above). The terrestrial, world globe. And here the companion celestial star globe. The tradition of making globes in pairs dates back to the great Dutch globe maker, Gerard Mercator.
On the Celestial globe you can see the various constellations in the Northern and Southern hemisphere. The concept here is that when you look at the sky, it appears as a moving concave sphere -- even though, of course, it is not. We perceive it this way because we we are situated on a sphere -- the earth -- that is rotating once a day and revolving around the sun (the closest star to earth) once a year. So, with a celestial globe, imagine the earth is in the center, and we are looking up at what was known in ancient times as the celestial firmament. Actually, the stars in the sky are at various distances apart. But the way they appear to us, is how they are shown on the globe. And this has a scientific purpose because it allows us to look at the sky and recognize different stars and constellations. At different times of the year, when we look at the night sky we can also see some of the planets in our solar system, comets, nebulae, etc., but these are not indicated on a celestial globe. |
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