Julius Schiller

Who was Julius Schiller?

Julius Schiller was a lawyer from Augsburg, Germany, who like his fellow citizen and colleague Johann Bayer published a star atlas in celestial cartography.

In the year of his death, Schiller, with Bayer's assistance, published the star atlas Coelum Stellatum Christianum which replaced pagan constellations with biblical and early Christian figures. Specifically, Schiller replaced the zodiacal constellations with the twelve apostles, the northern constellations by figures from the New Testament and the southern constellations by figures from the Old Testament.

The planets, sun and moon were also replaced by biblical figures.

Lucas Kilian was the artist who engraved the plates.

The star atlas was considered merely a curiosity and, in contrast to Bayer's Uranometria, did not gain wide acceptance.