Cast of the Farnese Atlas globe

INTRODUCTION
- Man and the stars
SECTION I
- The dawn of astronomy: Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Biblical Cosmos
SECTION II
- The cosmos becomes a sphere
SECTION III
- The geometry of the cosmos
SECTION IV
- The skies of Islam
SECTION V
- Evangelisation of the cosmos
SECTION VI
- The Renaissance of Astronomy
SECTION VII
- Galileo: the cosmos through the telescope
SECTION VIII
- From Galileo to Newton

Zoom

Cast of the Farnese Atlas globe, ca. 1930
Rome, Museo della Civiltà Romana, inv. M.C.R. 2896

The celestial sphere carried by Atlas on his back is the oldest depiction of the sky as the ancients saw it. The globe features the celestial equator, the ecliptic with the band of the zodiac, the Arctic and Antarctic circles, the colure and the constellations (19 northern, 14 southern) with the 12 signs of the zodiac.