Before the advancement of science and technology, what drove people to make drawings of the night sky and space? Rooney’s book contains a plethora of exciting human-made depictions of outer space. Drawings of the universe and hand-drawn maps of the stars, created all across the globe from various eras, in which all life on our planet coalesces into one. Photographs of planets using the latest telescopic cameras where the colors and detail make you feel almost as if you’re looking at a picture of a cell in the human body.

When Galileo observed the rings of Saturn for the first time with a telescope in the 17th century, the planet appeared to him instead to be triple-bodied… In the past, astronomers and astrologists predicted the futures of powerful people using the stars… Reading about stories like these, we can only think that the power of imagination was a vital tool for those in the past. This is a wonderful book containing over 200 illustrations and images of our solar system and beyond.

Mapping the Universe: Exploring and chronicling the cosmos
Author: Anne Rooney
Japanese Translation: Kazuhiro Suzuki
Published by: Nikkei National Geographic Inc.