Date: February 19, 2009
Title: Wil Tirion: Uranographer
Podcaster: Christopher Watson
Organization: The SkyGX Project
Description: Dutch graphic designer Wil Tirion is the undisputed preeminent celestial cartographer of our time. Creator of such seminal works as “Sky Atlas 2000.0” and “Uranometria 2000.0”, Tirion set the standard for printed sky atlases in the 20th century and beyond. On this day, his 66th birthday, we celebrate Wil Tirion’s vast contribution to the art and science of uranography: the mapping of the astronomical sky.
Bio: Christopher Watson is an elected Council Member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO), principle architect of The International Variable Star Index (VSX) at the AAVSO, the most complete and up-to-date live database of variable star information, creator of the deep all-sky atlas SkyGX (in preparation), and an avid collector of star atlases.
Today’s Sponsor: The episode of 365 Days of Astronomy is sponsored in honor of the James Randy education Foundation. Learn more and www.randi.org
Transcript:
He is the undisputed preeminent celestial cartographer of our time. Dutch graphic designer Wil Tirion has been creating beautiful and exacting charts and atlases of the heavens for over 30 years, and is sought after world-wide by publishers and authors as the “go-to guy” in the relatively esoteric field of uranography: the mapping of the astronomical sky. Tirion is the creator of such seminal works as the wildly popular Sky Atlas 2000.0, The Cambridge Star Atlas, and his masterpiece, Uranometria 2000.0, a two-volume set of gorgeously executed charts encompassing the entire sky down to stellar visual magnitude 9.75. He has quite literally set the Gold Standard for printed sky atlases in the 21st Century and beyond.
Hello, I’m Christopher Watson of The SkyGX Project. For me, Wil Tirion is a name that has been synonymous for sky charting excellence for 20 years now. I looked to his published works first when I set out to create an all-sky atlas of my own a few years back. The experience of creating such a work, I think, has put me in a unique position to produce a podcast focused on a true master in the field. So I put this program together for The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast to celebrate Wil Tirion’s vast contributions to the art and science of uranography. And today, February 19, in the International Year of Astronomy 2009, is also Wil’s 66th birthday-the perfect day to put a spotlight on this man and his unique talents.
We’ll take a look back at Wil Tirion’s beginnings as an up-and-coming graphic designer, and how he merged his design talents with his interest in the stars. I’ll also share an informative and revealing telephone conversation I had with Wil, where we covered the specifics of why and how he created his atlases. It was a tremendous honor, and quite a treat for me personally, to interview Wil. And I think you’ll enjoy what he had to say. But first, a little background…
Wil Tirion’s parents were both from Rotterdam, and his older brother, Richard, was born there in 1941, not long after World War II started for the Netherlands. But Wil was born in 1943 in Breda, a city in the southern part of the country, because his parents were evacuated there from Rotterdam, as their city took the brunt of continued Axis bombings. The family returned to Rotterdam when Wil was 4.
Wil became interested in astronomy at the age of 10. Recognizing his son’s interest in the stars and planets, Wil’s father presented him with a copy of Gij en de Sterrenwereld (You and the World of Stars) by B. H. Bürgel. In the back of the book was a fold-out star map that Wil became fascinated with. He compared the chart to the night sky, and soon noticed that the map was not all that accurate. At the age of 12, using ball-point pens, he started making his own constellation maps, trying his best to make them match the sky better than what he saw in the book.
Wil put himself through correspondence courses: a Dutch course that taught him much about typography, and another course with the Connecticut-based Famous Artist School. In 1965, at the age of 22, he began practicing what he had learned, and started work as a graphic designer for a Rotterdam printer.
Ten years later, Wil took a wife, Cokkie, and two years after that, started on his first complete set of sky maps, five charts which eventually appeared in Encyclopedia of Astronomy, and then again as a separate set of charts for the British Astronomical Association. Though he has no specific training in the field, and didn’t know much about cartography and map projection when he started, he did do a lot of reading and experimenting.
And that is where we pick up the conversation between Wil Tirion and I. n December of last year, Wil graciously agreed to an interview which I conducted with him via telephone. It was a 30-minute talk, which has been edited down to a tantalizing 5 minutes for this podcast. The extended version, including the uncut interview, is being made available elsewhere. Please check at the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast website for a link to that version.
So now, a conversation with Wil Tirion. A man who was once described by his very good friend and co-author, the late George Lovi, as an “astronomical and uranographical aficionado”.
Christopher Watson: Hello Wil.
Wil Tirion: Hi Chris. How are you?
CW: I’m fine. How are things in the Netherlands?
WT: Ah, wet and cold.
CW: Wet and cold. Well, it is the Winter, so it’s got to be wet and cold, huh?
WT: Yeah, right.
CW: This podcast is actually going to be released on February 19th, which is your birthday…
WT: Yes, right.
CW: So, I should say Happy Birthday, Wil!
WT: Well, thank you very much.
CW: When you set about to create your first sky atlas in 1977-which eventually became the BAA Star Charts 1950.0-what tools of the trade did you use, and where did the data for the stars and other objects found on those charts come from?
WT: Well, as a young boy, I always wanted to have a star catalog. Because I saw star maps in books, and often noticed that they were not really accurate. So I thought, when I have a catalog, I can set up a grid, draw the stars exactly in the right position. But many years later, I started buying some modern star atlases, like Norton’s, the Becvar series, and a few catalogs. And one of these catalog was by a Russian astronomer named Michaelov, and was down to magnitude 6.5…complete to 6.5. I set up a grid…a simple rectangular grid for the equatorial part, and a simple polar grid for the two polar maps. Then I started to use strips of paper that were very finely calibrated, with scales for Right Ascension and Declination. Then I plotted the positions, then I read from the catalog, line by line. I marked those positions with a sharp pencil, together with other things I needed to know-like it’s a double or a variable, or whatever-and then I checked every plotted star against the other atlases I had, and I did that before I started putting it all in ink. When I put it in ink, I used stencils, templates, all the old-fashioned stuff, on the drawing table. Only the constellation names and the Greek letters were glued onto the artwork.
CW: That’s fascinating. It’s just a totally manual process…just…
WT: Sure, yes.
CW: Yeah…
WT: I didn’t even have a drawing table. I did it on the dining room table. (laughter)
CW: You know, with the release of the scientific results from the European Space Agency’s Hipparcos mission-the satellite astrometry-which happened in the first half of the 1990’s, the world finally had an extremely accurate and complete all-sky stellar catalog. How did the availability of this larger and deeper space-based stellar catalog change the way you approached the updating of these two atlases?
WT: Well, the initiative for updating the two atlases came from the publishers, Sky Publishing and Willmann-Bell.
CW: Right.
WT: I am an artist, and I have no experience at all in writing software or programming. So for updating the big atlases, I needed somebody who could do that for me. For the new Sky Atlas, the expertise came from Roger Sinnott-a well-known name, of course, to you…
CW: Yes.
WT: …who wrote all the software to create the maps. We chose to use exactly the same setup for the charts and the chart projections that I used in the First Edition. Now, we had been e-mailing, and exchanging files for weeks to come to the right series of symbol sizes, the right typefaces, etc. And then when everything was decided about, each rough chart was created by Roger in less than one minute, in a format that I could open and work with in Adobe Illustrator.
CW: Uh huh…
WT: Then my part of the work started. All the stars and objects were in the right place, but the labels were a complete mess! I had to rearrange them to make the maps readable, attractive, and make sure that they didn’t overlap each other, or overlap grids, or other details on the maps, and so on. But, also the chart borders and legend had to be created.
CW: Now, over the years since the breakthrough release of Sky Atlas 2000.0, you’ve produced many other chart sets and smaller atlases for a number of other authors and publishers…and most recently we’ve got The Cambridge Double Star Atlas, which comes out in March. So…where do you go from here, Wil? I mean, what great atlases are still left undone? What is the next great project for Wil Tirion?
WT: OK, well… (laughter) …that’s kind of hard to say, I guess. Well, I’m 66 now, but I do not intend to stop working yet. But only the atlases would not be enough to make a living…especially since, over the last few years, the sales have gone down. But, I still have one atlas unpublished, because the publisher fails to find a writer. Maybe you know somebody? (laughter) But it’s an atlas focusing on deep-sky objects, with a lot of photographs, and with beautiful star charts, with deep blue, almost black background, and the stars in spectral colors. It goes down to magnitude 7.5. I hope it will eventually be published. Usually, ideas for new projects come from the publishers. That has kept me so busy over the last 30 years, that I never really had the time to think about personal projects. But who knows in the future. Everything’s possible.
So true, Wil. Everything is possible, particularly where it concerns someone whose work is in as much demand as yours. But it is gratifying to hear that you have no intention of slowing down just yet. Thankfully, we’ll all be able to enjoy at least a few more years worth of new sky maps from you.
Well, that’ll about do it. A very, very special thank you to Wil Tirion for contributing to this podcast. Wil, it was great! Let’s do it again sometime. And also thanks to the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast team for putting me on the schedule. I hope everyone enjoyed this episode. Now…I’ve got to get back to my atlas!
To listen to Christopher’s full interview with Wil Tirion, find it at this link:
http://www.archive.org/details/WilTirionUranographerunabridged-Iya365DaysOfAstronomyPodcast-
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the New Media Working Group of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. Audio post-production by Preston Gibson. Bandwidth donated by libsyn.com and wizzard media. Web design by Clockwork Active Media Systems. You may reproduce and distribute this audio for non-commercial purposes. Please consider supporting the podcast with a few dollars (or Euros!). Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org. Until tomorrow…goodbye.