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The termcosmography has two distinct meanings: traditionally it has been theprotoscience ofmapping the general features of thecosmos,heaven andEarth; more recently, it has been used to describe the ongoing effort to determine the large-scale features of theobservable universe.
Premodern views of cosmography can be traditionally divided into those following the tradition ofancient near eastern cosmology, dominant in theAncient Near East and inearly Greece.[clarification needed]
The 14th-century work'Aja'ib al-makhluqat wa-ghara'ib al-mawjudat byPersian physicianZakariya al-Qazwini is considered to be an early work of cosmography. TraditionalHindu,Buddhist andJain cosmography schematize a universe centered onMount Meru surrounded by rivers, continents and seas. These cosmographies posit a universe being repeatedly created and destroyed over time cycles of immense lengths.
In 1551,Martín Cortés de Albacar, fromZaragoza, Spain, publishedBreve compendio de la esfera y del arte de navegar. Translated into English and reprinted several times, the work was of great influence in Britain for many years. He proposed spherical charts and mentioned magnetic deviation and the existence of magnetic poles.
Peter Heylin's 1652 bookCosmographie (enlarged from hisMicrocosmos of 1621) was one of the earliest attempts to describe the entire world in English, and is the first known description ofAustralia, and among the first ofCalifornia. The book has four sections, examining the geography, politics, and cultures of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, with an addendum onTerra Incognita, including Australia, and extending toUtopia,Fairyland, and the "Land ofChivalrie".
In 1659, Thomas Porter published a smaller, but extensiveCompendious Description of the Whole World, which also included achronology of world events fromCreation forward. These were all part of a major trend in theEuropean Renaissance to explore (and perhaps comprehend) the known world.
Inastrophysics, the term "cosmography" is beginning to be used to describe attempts to determine the large-scalematter distribution andkinematics of theobservable universe, dependent on theFriedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric but independent of the temporal dependence of thescale factor on the matter/energy composition of the Universe.[1][2]The word was also commonly used byBuckminster Fuller in his lectures.
Using theTully-Fisher relation on a catalog of 10000 galaxies has allowed the construction of 3D images of the local structure of the cosmos.[3] This led to the identification of a local supercluster named theLaniakea Supercluster.[4]
