The important and quite striking celestial atlas of Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr (1677-1750), presenting many conceptions of the configuration of the solar system and the universe, hemispheres of the night sky with pictorial representations of the solar system, a world map with California an island, et cetera. Many of the maps and plates were engraved in the decades prior to the publication of this work, and appeared in earlier atlases published by the Homanns, but this is their first assemblage in this form. Following his studies at the university, Doppelmayr spent some time in the house of the astronomy professor Lothar Zumbach von Koesfeld and learned (probably in the Musschenbroek workshop) how to grind and figure telescope lenses. He then travelled to Rotterdam and in May to England where he visited Oxford and London. Doppelmayr wrote on astronomy, geography, cartography, spherical trigonometry, sundials and mathematical instruments. He often collaborated with the cartographer Johann Baptist Homann (1664-1724), founder of the firm which was to publish the present work.