Zodiac artwork sources, methods and licences

This provenance page accompanies Aphelion Prints' twelve traditional zodiac constellation plates: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpius, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius and Pisces.

Sources and credit

Figure lines were adapted from IAU and Sky & Telescope material through Olaf Frohn's d3-celestial conversion. Upstream chart material is credited under CC BY 4.0. The IAU constellation resource explains that stick figures are conventional and may vary; no IAU endorsement is implied.

What Aphelion changed

Aphelion Prints created the projection, independently fitted centre and scale for each plate, colours, line treatment, type and page composition. North is up and east is left. Different plates use different scales. These decorative figures are not official constellation boundaries, dated horizon views or certified epoch-2000 scientific charts.

Cancer includes the exact captured d3-celestial source point for HIP 43100 at right ascension 131.6666 degrees and declination +28.7651 degrees, visual magnitude 6.58. Independent XHIP evidence corroborates the identity at catalogue epoch J1991.25; the plate does not claim a newly propagated J2000 coordinate. Leo retains the accepted pilot's source stars and figure chains, with a changed centre, scale and style for this range.

This is a traditional twelve-subject selection. Ophiuchus is excluded even though the ecliptic crosses it.

d3-celestial BSD 3-Clause notice

Download the exact notice as plain text.

Copyright (c) 2015, Olaf Frohn
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