[Harris, Joseph]. Senex, John

Stellarum fixarum Hemisphaerium Australe — Stellarum fixarum Hemisphaerium Boreale. London: Engraved and Sold by John Senex, [ca. 1721]



2 engraved broadsheets (27½ x 26 in.; 700 x 660 mm). Australe: 4 tissue repairs to wormholes along top margin, length of one fold (18½ in.; 470 mm) strengthened, a few marginal stains on verso. Boreale:  Scattered staining in upper register, about a dozen tissue repairs to small marginal wormholes and tears, length of one fold (18½ in.; 470 mm) strengthened.

Warner, The Sky Explored, pp. 242–243

First issues of the engraved astronomical northern and southern hemisphere star maps by Senex, a successful cartographer and publisher. The product of an uneasy alliance between Halley and Flamsteed, it was the most widely used of all contemporary star maps. Senex published these charts in response to the great demand in England for single-sheet, reliable star catalogs; they were popular with both astronomers and navigators as England began her imperial and commercial domination of the globe.

The map includes their most recent discoveries including showing novas and nebulas derived from Halley's work in Philosophical Transactions as well as the seventh-magnitude telescopic stars that had been observed by Flamsteed. The northern map includes nine small spheres and numbered notes with problems and solutions in the left and right panels; the southern map contains two spheres. The two Harris celestials are found in Defoe and Cutler's Atlas maritimus et commercialis (London, 1728), where they are described as being sold separately for "Eight Shillings single," but they form a uniform set with two other maps, also by Harris and engraved by Senex, in the Atlas (Stellarum fixarum hemisphaerium Boreale) and Stellarum fixarum hemisphaerium Australe.