Celestial cartography

Measuring the position and light of charted objects requires a variety of instruments and techniques.

These techniques have developed from angle measurements with quadrants and the unaided eye, through sextants combined with lenses for light magnification, up to current methods which include computer-automated space telescopes.

[8] In principle, astrometry can involve such measurements of planets, stars, black holes and galaxies to any celestial body.

[9] Throughout human history, astrometry played a significant role in shaping our understanding of the structure of the visible sky, which accompanies the location of bodies in it, hence making it a fundamental tool to celestial cartography.

This is apparent when comparing the imaginative "star maps" of Poeticon Astronomicon – illustrations beside a narrative text from the antiquity – to the star maps of Johann Bayer, based on precise star-position measurements from the Rudolphine Tables by Tycho Brahe.