Celestial Atlas vs Photomicrography
星図の様式 / 顕微鏡写真
Celestial Atlas comes from Diagrammatic Expression and Photomicrography from Photographic Genres. One is style and the other technique. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Celestial Atlas
The Baroque celestial atlas layering constellation mythology over observation. Cellarius's Harmonia Macrocosmica marks the summit of an age when scientific diagram could also be decorative art.
Photomicrography
Scientific photography that records, through a microscope, structures the eye cannot reach. Bentley's snowflakes proved the scientific image could be beautiful, and that claim runs on through polarized color and fluorescence to the Nikon Small World of today.
| Celestial Atlas | Photomicrography | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 17th–19th century | 1840s– |
| Family | Diagrammatic Expression | Photographic Genres |
| Kind | Style | Technique |
| Cues | Myth figures over stars / Concentric celestial structure / Gold and blue coloring / Ornamented cartouches | Structures beyond sight / Specimens on black / Polarized and fluorescent color / The wonder of symmetry |
| Best used for | Double-page plates for books and exhibitions on astronomy or navigation · Showing a whole body of knowledge on one sheet with its ornament intact | Illustrations for outreach and science writing on research findings · Product documents that show material structure as evidence |
| Type | Title inside an ornamented frame, star names tiny and italic | Put magnification and a scale bar in the frame with the specimen name |
| Composition | Concentric spheres at the center, four corners filled with cartouches | Float the specimen on black, turned so repetition reads |
| Material | Gold and hand color on deep blue, stars struck as engraved points | Separate tissues by polarized or fluorescent color and record the basis |
| Caution | Drawing the myth figures so large that the star positions vanish leaves a plate working neither as diagram nor as ornament. | Scale bar and magnification get dropped while the color is being made beautiful, and the result becomes decoration that no longer works as a scientific figure. |