Cosmic Cartography

For thousands of years, humans have looked up at the sky with wonder and excitement. Although we have seen millennia of change and advancement, our obsession with the cosmos remains. Across boundaries of culture, religion, language, and time, we look up, seeking to understand the universe around us.

When trying to demonstrate and share knowledge about the universe, generations of astronomers turned their eyes away from the skies to create visual representations that anyone can understand: Maps. Celestial cartography has been around since at least the 15th Century BCE, when Egyptian architect and minister Senenmut's tomb was adorned with a star chart. Since that time, astronomers have developed coordinates for the skies and created maps to visualize the heavens. These maps have been used to represent everything from a star's position in the sky to the surfaces of distant planets to our understanding of the universe itself.

Exhibit was curated by Outreach and Instruction Archivist, Evan Spencer.

Exhibit was displayed at UTA's Special Collections from October 4, 2024 - May 1, 2025 as a part of the 2024 Virginia Garrett Lectures on the History of Cartography.

Digital exhibit was published by Cartographic Archivist, Madeline Lowry.