Urania's Mirror

[1][2] They are illustrations based on Alexander Jamieson's A Celestial Atlas,[2] but the addition of holes punched in them allow them to be held up to a light to see a depiction of the constellation's stars.

[1] They were engraved by Sidney Hall, and were said to be designed by "a lady", but have since been identified as the work of the Reverend Richard Rouse Bloxam, an assistant master at Rugby School.

Hingley calls Urania's Mirror "one of the most charming and visually attractive of the many aids to astronomical self-instruction produced in the early nineteenth century".

He notes three other attempts to use the same gimmick—Franz Niklaus König's Atlas céleste (1826), Friedrich Braun's Himmels-Atlas in transparenten Karten (1850), and Otto Möllinger's Himmelsatlas (1851), but states that they lack Urania's Mirror's artistry.

[2] The depictions of the constellations in Urania's Mirror are redrawings from those in Alexander Jamieson's A Celestial Atlas, published about three years earlier, and include unique attributes differing from Jamieson's sky atlas, including the new constellation of Noctua the owl, and Norma Nilotica – a measuring device for the Nile floods – held by Aquarius the water bearer.

Some proposed prominent female astronomers such as Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville, others credited the engraver Sidney Hall.

Hingley notes that many contemporary publications attempted to suggest women had played a role in their creation, perhaps to make them sound less threatening.

[6] Ian Ridpath, noting the plagiarism of the art from A Celestial Atlas, suggests that this alone might be sufficient to cause the author to wish to remain anonymous.

[7] A "Second Part" of Urania's Mirror, which was to have included illustrations of the planets and a portable orrery, was advertised,[8] but no evidence exists to show it was ever released.