Ursa Major Constellation (Big Dipper)

A rare and extraordinary 1801 Johann Elbert Bode elephant folio celestial, constellation, or star map of Ursa Major (the Great Bear or Big Dipper) and Leo Minor.
Considered the largest and most dramatic celestial maps of their era, possibly ever published, Royal edition, stars heightened with gold.
Bode's gigantic star charts detail thousands of stars, nebulae, and clusters. Constellations are dramatically represented in pictorial form, as was the convention of the previous century.
May of the newly discovered nebulae, double stars, star and clusters recently discovered by European astronomers such as Lacaille, Lalande, Messier, and Herschel, are identified. Bode presents this map on a conic geocentric projection in which most constellations are seen from the front.

The current example is spectacularly colored with gold. Bode's constellation maps are extremely rare. Issued in Berlin in 1801 for publication in Johann Elert Bode's Uranographia. Elephant.