A map of astronomy in Europe

Abstract

The Map of Astronomy in Europe has been designed to demonstrate how diverse information about a specific topic can be put together and presented in an attractive way in order to raise interest of society in the topic – in this case astronomical observations. The map represents information on several phenomena and objects related to astronomical observations in Europe and have been compiled from data collected from numerous publicly available sources during 2012–2013. The data were collected, transformed and processed using different methods to create geographic information on the visibility of solar eclipses and maximum possible percentage of sunshine hours for the geographic extent of Europe. Upon requests of amateur astronomers that made up the primary target group, the map was complemented by astronomical observatories, planetaria, astronomical clocks, meteorite craters and eventually by the most famous UNESCO World Heritage sites related to ancient or modern astronomical observations. Explanatory graphs, charts and lists of the objects were added for better understanding of the map information. Data verification, generalization and filtering, classification of the objects, building the GIS database, analysis of data, and cartographic visualization was performed at the Centre for Cartography at Vilnius University. Special attention was given to map design with an attempt to represent both very modern and historical objects in a consistent manner. The reference scale of the printed map is 1:8,000,000. It contains supplementary maps at scale 1:40,000,000 and 1:35,000,000. The size of the map image is 53 × 63 cm.