middle - Michael Oates,
left - Anthony W Cross, right - Kevin J Kilburn
John Bevis' proposed 'Uranographia Britannica'
An extremely rare atlas compiled by John Bevis, in the eighteenth
discovered at the Manchester Astronomical Society.
The Manchester Astronomical Society have discovered that a star
atlas that has been in their library since before the Second World War
is one of only sixteen copies known to exist. This extremely rare atlas
was compiled by John Bevis, an eighteenth century physician - turned
astronomer, whose other claim to fame is as the discoverer of the Crab
Nebula, the wreck of a star that became a supernova in the year 1054
and which is now regarded as a key object of interest with modern
astronomers; in the UK particularly with radio astronomers at Jodrell
An up-to date list of all known
Bevis Atlases, from the Journal for the History of Astronomy
article by Kilburn, Pasachoff, and Gingerich, is available as a PDF
For more information see the links below.
- More information about the atlas
- NOTE: Version 2.0 of the CD-ROM version of the atlas
is now available for sale
- Granada Television Filmed at the Godlee
Observatory: Wed 29th April 98
Friday, 27th March, 1998
The Manchester A.S. Atlas has featured in the following
- Cover Disk version featured on Sky at Night Magazine
- An article by Nigel
Hawkes "The unluckiest stargazer of all" in the Wednesday 24th Feb 1999
issue of The Times.
- A Review (New
Products, p67) in the December 1998 issue of Astronomy Now.
- A four page article "The
of Manchester" in the November 1998 issue of Sky &
- "The CD-ROM"
featured in the Software Showcase of the September 1998 issue of Sky & Telescope.
- A two page article "A
Treasure" in the June 1998 issue of Astronomy Now.
The Bevis Atlas has also featured in the following publications...
- Kevin J Kilburn,
Godlee Observatory, UMIST, Jay M Pasachoff, Williams College -Hopkins
Observatory and Owen Gingerich, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics. 'The Forgotten Star Atlas: John Bevis's Uranographia
Britannica'. JHA, xxxiv (2003). 127-144.
- William B Ashworth,
Jr. University of Missouri, Kansas City. 'John Bevis and his
Uranographia (ca. 1750)'. Proc. Am.Phil.Soc. Vol 125, 1, Feb, 1981.
- Kevin Kilburn. 'Tycho's
Bevis describes Tycho's star seen in 1572 in his
Uranographia Britannica'. Astronomy Now, July 2000.
- Kevin J Kilburn. 'Tycho's
the supernovae of Uranographia Britannica'. Astronomy
& Geophysics, April 2001, Vol 42, Issue 2.
- There is now a Belorussian translation
of this page available.
Just a few small examples of the charts.
For more information about the Bevis Atlas and other Celestial Atlases
see the Linda Hall Library
and the Celestial
by Michael Oates
Page modified 17 February, 2007