Astropro's Website Of the Week Award ©1998 by Richard Nolle

MAY 11, 1998 - Representations of Astronomy is something of an online celestial art exhibition, a feast for the eyes. It's a feast for your modem as well: this gallery is chock-full of huge images, and they're often several to a single web page, so they really eat up the bandwidth. In short, some of these pages take so long to load that you'll have plenty of time not only to go get a cup of coffee - but to brew a whole pot of the stuff while you're waiting. Okay, I'm exaggerating a little . . . but not much, since one page included a 3 Mb picture among the five it displayed!

Representations of Astronomy is heavy on Renaissance-era artwork. While the website's title may suggest otherwise, there are plenty of astrological visuals here. Of course you'll find lots of zodiacal images, portraying the signs both individually and collectively.

Don't forget to check out the zodiacal melothesic figure, that classical representation of the parts of the body associated with the signs of the zodiac. There are a half dozen of these images to view, all on a single page. Chronologically, they range from 1493 to 1894 . . .

Other visual gems in this collection include quaint images of astronomers, the strangest looking Cetus I've ever seen (on the sparse celestial atlases page), a charming portrait of the comet that terrified all of Europe in 1527, and a really beautiful Baroque map of the heavens on the constellations page - which alas has a broken link to an image from the Royal Encyclopedia. (Here's hoping it's fixed by the time you drop by - along with the broken links on the instruments page.)

If you're wondering whom to thank for assembling this collection of images, his name is Chris Mullen and he's with the School of Design at the University of Brighton. If you're so inclined, click on the link to his name and join me in saying "Thanks, Chris!"

Richard Nolle, Certified Professional Astrologer phone or fax 480-753-6261 - email rnolle@astropro.com Box 26599 - Tempe, AZ 85285-6599 - USA on the World Wide Web at http://www.astropro.com