Global Road Map

The earth is a huge observation car in which we are ceaselessly touring through the stars, while the sublime outlook, north, east, south and west is forever changing at the rate of one degree every four minutes, or 15 degrees per hour, by the daily rotation of the earth on its axis; and 30 degrees per month, at a given hour, by the annual revolution of the earth around the sun. With this Road Map in hand, no one need journey past the stars unable to identify and name the shining orbs and storied constellations that adorn the expanse of the heavens. At any hour of any night in any year, whenever stars are visible, one has but to note the day of the month, consult his watch for the hour of the night, and refer to the said day and hour in Table B, in order instantly to find in the map, not only a brilliant picture of the sky at the time, but also the names of the stars and constellations, the latter being clearly defined by characteristic geometrical figures cal culated to fix them permanently in mind. Un folded and viewed as a whole, the Road Map gives a bird's-eye view of the star-groups as seen toward all points of the compass at once, with their motions arrested and crystallized around the meridians of the zodiacal signs; the panorama of the year thus formed disclosing an arabesque so alive with suggested motion that the stars and milky way all that vast array of "life infusing suns of other worlds, that animate the sky" fairly seem to live and move before our very eyes.

By way of adding knowledge to pleasure, the Road Map is supplied with a glossary of astro nomical terms, and with index tables for locating planets, stars and constellations. The lines fixed among the stars (ecliptic, equator, colures, north and south meridians) are given in the maps; also the 360 degrees of the annual course of the sun and planets around the ecliptic; the degrees of declination, north or south, on the colures and other hour-circles; and finally, on the equator, the points of intersection with the hour-circles, I-XXIV, respectively. Everything required to explain the maps has been tabulated for easy survey.

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