However, the publisher has changed hands, and much of the Willmann-Bell catalog has gone out of print. This has created a legal gray area. While copyright remains active (the atlas is still under copyright protection), the lack of an official digital sale option means that many astronomers have turned to scanning their personal copies for private use.
To understand the significance of Uranometria 2000.0 , one must first look at its namesake. The title is a direct homage to Johannes Bayer’s Uranometria of 1603, the first atlas to cover the entire celestial sphere. Bayer introduced the system of labeling stars with Greek letters (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc.), a convention still used today. uranometria 2000 pdf