The First Deep-Sky Atlas.

FEATURES CELESTIAL CARTOGRAPHY From earliest times astronomers were aware that among the fixed stars there were a few, equally fixed but un-star-like objects which appeared to them as "misty patches" or "little clouds". Bode and Uranographia One obvious candidate is the wonderful Uranographia, which was produced by the German astronomer Johann Elert Bode. Bode included more than 2,000 nebulae and hundreds of double stars based on the observations of British astronomer William Herschel, who surveyed the heavens in the late 18th century from England with reflector telescopes of 6, 12, 18.7, and (ultimately) 48 inches in aperture. The number of deep-sky objects plotted would seem to make Vorstellung Der Gestirne the first usable deep-sky atlas - but Bode went further by adding two special charts depicting nebulae and double stars in greater detail. [Extracted from the article]