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Focus on a few selected characteristics of the region or give an overview of the region under consideration. Atlases often contain social, religious, economic, and geopolitical information for a specific region. Maps and atlases are the primary tools for spatial analysis. They may project physical, biological, or cultural features of the region or depict a correlation between several features of the region. Maps are made up of several components—symbols, title, legend, direction, map scale, source, and insets.
Maps are made up of several components—symbols, title, legend, direction, map scale, source, and insets. An atlas is a compilation of maps presented in the form of a print publication or in a multimedia format.
Northern Sky
This map of the northern sky is taken from the National Geographic Society's Atlas of the World. An atlas is a collection of maps. Some maps are specific, such as road maps or, sky maps. A sky map displays information about constellations and other celestial objects visible in the Northern Hemisphere. The cloudy smudge running through the map is the Milky Way, our galaxy.
An atlas is a book or collection of maps. Many atlases also contain facts and history about certain places. There are many kinds of specialized atlases, such as road atlases and historical atlases. There are also star atlases, which give the location and placement of stars, planets and other celestial objects.
Besides showing maps of all the countries and continents, a world atlas may also provide facts about the countries. Individual maps of major cities or other points of interest may also be included in a world atlas. Population statistics, the location of natural resources, cultural and religious information and political data are frequently found in an atlas.
Although people have been using maps for thousands of years, civilizations really didn't begin producing large atlases until the 1500s. During this time, European and Asian countries were exploring the world through trade and colonization. They depended on atlases to guide them through unfamiliar territory. As European explorers mapped the "New World" (the Americas), they also updated atlases with their discoveries.
In 1595, a collection of maps prepared by the Flemish mapmaker Gerardus Mercator was published with the word "atlas" in the title. Atlas referred to a portrait of King Atlas, a mythical African monarch. King Atlas invented the first celestial globe. A celestial globe is a ball-shaped map of the stars and constellations. Celestial globes were very important in navigation when sailors used stars to determine their position at sea. Mercator showed King Atlas to demonstrate his importance to navigation. This was the first time the term was applied to a collection of maps. Eventually, "atlas" came to be used for any book of maps.
Best World Atlas in 2022
Map Collections of the Library of Congress The Geography and Map Division (G & M) has custody of the largest and most comprehensive cartographic collection in the world with collections numbering over 5.5 million maps, 80,000 atlases, 6,000 reference works, over 500 globes and globe gores, 3,000 raised relief models.
Atlas, a collection of maps or charts, are usually bound together. The name derives from a custom—initiated by Gerardus Mercator in the 16th century—of using the figure of the Titan Atlas, holding the globe on his shoulders, as a frontispiece for books of maps.