Dr. Nick Kanas is an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He trained at Stanford University (B.A. Psychology); UCLA Medical School (M.D. 1971); University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston (Internship); and UCSF (Psychiatry Residency 1975). After training and serving in the United States Air Force as a psychiatrist, he joined the faculty at UCSF and the affiliated San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where he conducted clinical and research work on people suffering from stressful conditions. He has over 230 professional publications and is the recipient of the Dr. J. Elliott Royer Award for academic psychiatry.
He directed the Group Therapy Training Program for the UCSF Department of Psychiatry; supervised and led patient therapy groups; conducted training workshops; wrote a book entitled Group Therapy for Schizophrenic Patients, and for over 20 years edited the Research Reviews section of the International Journal of Group Psychotherapy. In 2021, he published a book entitled: Integrative Group Therapy for Psychosis: An Evidence-based Approach.
Since 1969, Prof. Kanas has studied and written about psychological and interpersonal issues affecting people living and working in space. He has done space-related research since the late 1980s, and for over 15 years he was a NASA-funded principal investigator, doing psychological research with astronauts and cosmonauts. He is a member and former trustee of the International Academy of Astronautics, and he has been a consultant to SpaceX. In 2017, he gave the Psi Chi Keynote Speech on space psychology at the Eastern Psychological Association Convention in Boston; he was invited by the Buzz Aldrin Space Institute to participate in a Mars mission workshop at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida; and he was invited to give a series of lectures on space psychology to students at Beihang University, Beijing, China. For over 20 years, he has chaired the paper session on Behavior, Performance and Psychosocial Issues in Space for the yearly International Astronautical Congress, and he has presented papers and plenaries at Humans in Space Symposia (most recently in 2017 and 2021), and at NASA Human Research Program Investigators’ Workshops (most recently in 2021, 2022, and 2023).
In 1999, Prof. Kanas received the Aerospace Medical Association Raymond F. Longacre Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in the Psychological and Psychiatric Aspects of Aerospace Medicine. In 2008, he received the International Academy of Astronautics Life Science Award.
He has written three book on space psychology. Together with Dietrich Manzey, he is the senior author of the book Space Psychology and Psychiatry (now in its 2nd edition), which was given the 2004 International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Life Science Book Award. His book Humans in Space: The Psychological Hurdles was given the 2016 IAA Life Science Book Award. In 2023, he published a textbook entitled Behavioral Health and Human Interactions in Space, which won the IAA Life Sciences Book Award for that year. He continues to write and consult on the psychosocial aspects of human space travel.
Prof. Kanas has collected antiquarian celestial maps for over 40 years and has given a number of talks on celestial cartography at public venues, such as the Adler Planetarium, the Lick Observatory, and the California Academy of Sciences (as a Benjamin Dean lecturer). He also has presented at the International Conference on the History of Cartography at Harvard; International Map Collectors Society Conferences in Wellington (New Zealand) and Vienna; the Society for the History of Astronomy Conference in Birmingham (England); and the Flamsteed Astronomical Society meeting in Greenwich (England). He has published articles on celestial cartography in magazines and journals, such as Sky and Telescope, Imago Mundi, and the Journal of the International Map Collectors Society. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (London). He has written two celestial map books: Star Maps: History, Artistry, and Cartography (now in its 3rd edition), and Solar System Maps: From Antiquity to the Space Age.
He has been an amateur astronomer for over 60 years and is an avid reader of science fiction. He has presented talks on space psychology and on celestial mapping at several regional and World Con science fiction conventions; published three factual articles on space psychology in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine (one of which won the annual readers’ poll award for 2015 Best Fact Article); and has published three science fiction novels: The New Martians, The Protos Mandate, and The Caloris Network. He has written a screenplay for The New Martians, which currently is being reviewed by various producers.
Prof. Kanas is a docent (human evolution track) at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. He enjoys interacting with the public (both adults and children) and helping them learn about the marvels of science.
Dr. Nick Kanas is an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He trained at Stanford University (B.A. Psychology); UCLA Medical School (M.D. 1971); University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston (Internship); and UCSF (Psychiatry Residency 1975). After training and serving in the United States Air Force as a psychiatrist, he joined the faculty at UCSF and the affiliated San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where he conducted clinical and research work on people suffering from stressful conditions. He has over 230 professional publications and is the recipient of the Dr. J. Elliott Royer Award for academic psychiatry.
He directed the Group Therapy Training Program for the UCSF Department of Psychiatry; supervised and led patient therapy groups; conducted training workshops; wrote a book entitled Group Therapy for Schizophrenic Patients, and for over 20 years edited the Research Reviews section of the International Journal of Group Psychotherapy. In 2021, he published a book entitled: Integrative Group Therapy for Psychosis: An Evidence-based Approach.
Since 1969, Prof. Kanas has studied and written about psychological and interpersonal issues affecting people living and working in space. He has done space-related research since the late 1980s, and for over 15 years he was a NASA-funded principal investigator, doing psychological research with astronauts and cosmonauts. He is a member and former trustee of the International Academy of Astronautics, and he has been a consultant to SpaceX. In 2017, he gave the Psi Chi Keynote Speech on space psychology at the Eastern Psychological Association Convention in Boston; he was invited by the Buzz Aldrin Space Institute to participate in a Mars mission workshop at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida; and he was invited to give a series of lectures on space psychology to students at Beihang University, Beijing, China. For over 20 years, he has chaired the paper session on Behavior, Performance and Psychosocial Issues in Space for the yearly International Astronautical Congress, and he has presented papers and plenaries at Humans in Space Symposia (most recently in 2017 and 2021), and at NASA Human Research Program Investigators’ Workshops (most recently in 2021, 2022, and 2023).
In 1999, Prof. Kanas received the Aerospace Medical Association Raymond F. Longacre Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in the Psychological and Psychiatric Aspects of Aerospace Medicine. In 2008, he received the International Academy of Astronautics Life Science Award.
He has written three book on space psychology. Together with Dietrich Manzey, he is the senior author of the book Space Psychology and Psychiatry (now in its 2nd edition), which was given the 2004 International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Life Science Book Award. His book Humans in Space: The Psychological Hurdles was given the 2016 IAA Life Science Book Award. In 2023, he published a textbook entitled Behavioral Health and Human Interactions in Space, which won the IAA Life Sciences Book Award for that year. He continues to write and consult on the psychosocial aspects of human space travel.
Prof. Kanas has collected antiquarian celestial maps for over 40 years and has given a number of talks on celestial cartography at public venues, such as the Adler Planetarium, the Lick Observatory, and the California Academy of Sciences (as a Benjamin Dean lecturer). He also has presented at the International Conference on the History of Cartography at Harvard; International Map Collectors Society Conferences in Wellington (New Zealand) and Vienna; the Society for the History of Astronomy Conference in Birmingham (England); and the Flamsteed Astronomical Society meeting in Greenwich (England). He has published articles on celestial cartography in magazines and journals, such as Sky and Telescope, Imago Mundi, and the Journal of the International Map Collectors Society. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (London). He has written two celestial map books: Star Maps: History, Artistry, and Cartography (now in its 3rd edition), and Solar System Maps: From Antiquity to the Space Age.
He has been an amateur astronomer for over 60 years and is an avid reader of science fiction. He has presented talks on space psychology and on celestial mapping at several regional and World Con science fiction conventions; published three factual articles on space psychology in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine (one of which won the annual readers’ poll award for 2015 Best Fact Article); and has published three science fiction novels: The New Martians, The Protos Mandate, and The Caloris Network. He has written a screenplay for The New Martians, which currently is being reviewed by various producers.
Prof. Kanas is a docent (human evolution track) at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. He enjoys interacting with the public (both adults and children) and helping them learn about the marvels of science.
Nick Kanas, M.D., is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California San Francisco; a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society; and a past Vice President of the California Map Society. He has collected antiquarian celestial maps since 1982.
This map of the solar system captures the scope of astronomical knowledge in the early 1700s.
Around 1720, two Germans, astronomer and mathematician Johann Doppelmayr and cartographer Johann Homann, collaborated to create this chart. They included several descriptions from the writings of the Dutch astronomer Christian Huygens.
The map was later included in their 1742 Atlas Coelestis in quo Mundus Spectabilis. For reference, see: Nick Kanas, Star Maps: History, Artistry, and Cartography, 3rd edition (Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2019), 3-5, 235.
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Jul 26 2024
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At its core, the map depicts a universe revolving not around the Earth but around the Sun. The Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus had introduced this heliocentric model two centuries earlier, prompting intense conflict with believers of the traditional Earth-centric model.
In Doppelmayr and Homann's model, the planets circle the Sun, accompanied by Huygens' descriptions. Saturn and its moons (to the right of crab-shaped Cancer at the top) mark the outer boundary of the solar system.
(Uranus and Neptune would not be discovered until 1781 and 1846, respectively.)
Beyond Saturn lies the rest of the universe, depicted allegorically as the twelve zodiac constellations.
See Kanas, Star Maps, 3-5.
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Jul 26 2024
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Here, Doppelmayr and Homann depict the planets' sizes relative to one another and to the Sun.
See Kanas, Star Maps, 5.
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Jul 26 2024
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Here, Doppelmayr and Homann model a solar eclipse that took place on May 12, 1706.
See Kanas, Star Maps, 5.
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Jul 26 2024
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Like many other early 18th-century terrestrial maps, the map of the Earth used in the eclipse model depicts California (just above this dot) as an island.
See Kanas, Star Maps, 5.
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Jul 26 2024
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In Dots 6, 7, and 8, our two Johanns depict the three primary competing models of the solar system in allegorical terms.
On the bottom left in Dot 6 is the classical Greek, geocentric model summarized by the 2nd-century mathematician Ptolemy. Doppelmayr and Homann were not fans of the once-dominant Ptolemaic system; they depict this model as cracked and decrepit and partly obscure it with modern tools to discredit geocentrism.
See Kanas, Star Maps, 5, 66-70.
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Jul 26 2024
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Introduced by a putto, or baby angel, this is the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe's (1546-1601) compromise model between geocentrism and heliocentrism.
Nicolas Copernicus had published his theory of a Sun-centered universe back in 1543, but heliocentrism took a century to reach general acceptance. Universities and ecclesiastical leaders continued to teach the geocentric model and pushed back against the Copernicans, most famously with Galileo Galilei's 1633 heresy trial.
As in the classical model, the Sun and Moon revolve around the Earth. In a concession to Copernicus, however, the non-Earth planets revolve around the Sun.
See Kanas, Star Maps, 5, 104-6.
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Jul 26 2024
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Moving on to Dot 8, we find a dramatic image of Urania, the goddess of astronomy herself.
She introduces the heliocentric Copernican system as if to allegorically say, "This is the true model of the universe."
In addition, the label sic ratione ("according to reason") suggests that Doppelmayr and Homann preferred this model as well.
By the 1700s, the Copernican view was finally endorsed by most serious scientists.
See Kanas, Star Maps, 5, 101-3.
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Jul 26 2024
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Moving past the lunar eclipse shown above Urania, we see, in the top-right corner, other stars with their own planetary systems.
In the early 18th century, this leveled a radical challenge against the importance of our solar system. In 1600, Giordano Bruno, a noted philosophical troublemaker in Italy, had been burned at the stake for fostering such a view.
The fact that Doppelmayr and Homann could presage the existence of exoplanets (not observed until the late 1900s) highlights the monumental change in astronomy that had unfolded since Copernicus.
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Jul 26 2024
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Created and Presented by Nick Kanas.
Scripted and edited by Andrew Gu, Pixeum Summer 2024 Intern.
Courtesy of the Nick and Carolynn Kanas collection; and Star Maps: History, Artistry, and Cartography, 3rd edition (Nick Kanas, Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2019).
For more information on celestial maps, check out Nick Kanas' books on the subject:
Eight Interesting Aspects: Mapping the Solar System - Nick Kanas
Exhibit Stories:
Eight Interesting Aspects: Mapping the Solar System - Nick Kanas
i40550
Dr. Nick Kanas is an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He trained at Stanford University (B.A. Psychology); UCLA Medical School (M.D. 1971); University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston (Internship); and UCSF (Psychiatry Residency 1975). After training and serving in the United States Air Force as a psychiatrist, he joined the faculty at UCSF and the affiliated San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where he conducted clinical and research work on people suffering from stressful conditions. He has over 230 professional publications and is the recipient of the Dr. J. Elliott Royer Award for academic psychiatry.
He directed the Group Therapy Training Program for the UCSF Department of Psychiatry; supervised and led patient therapy groups; conducted training workshops; wrote a book entitled Group Therapy for Schizophrenic Patients, and for over 20 years edited the Research Reviews section of the International Journal of Group Psychotherapy. In 2021, he published a book entitled: Integrative Group Therapy for Psychosis: An Evidence-based Approach.
Since 1969, Prof. Kanas has studied and written about psychological and interpersonal issues affecting people living and working in space. He has done space-related research since the late 1980s, and for over 15 years he was a NASA-funded principal investigator, doing psychological research with astronauts and cosmonauts. He is a member and former trustee of the International Academy of Astronautics, and he has been a consultant to SpaceX. In 2017, he gave the Psi Chi Keynote Speech on space psychology at the Eastern Psychological Association Convention in Boston; he was invited by the Buzz Aldrin Space Institute to participate in a Mars mission workshop at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida; and he was invited to give a series of lectures on space psychology to students at Beihang University, Beijing, China. For over 20 years, he has chaired the paper session on Behavior, Performance and Psychosocial Issues in Space for the yearly International Astronautical Congress, and he has presented papers and plenaries at Humans in Space Symposia (most recently in 2017 and 2021), and at NASA Human Research Program Investigators’ Workshops (most recently in 2021, 2022, and 2023).
In 1999, Prof. Kanas received the Aerospace Medical Association Raymond F. Longacre Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in the Psychological and Psychiatric Aspects of Aerospace Medicine. In 2008, he received the International Academy of Astronautics Life Science Award.
He has written three book on space psychology. Together with Dietrich Manzey, he is the senior author of the book Space Psychology and Psychiatry (now in its 2nd edition), which was given the 2004 International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Life Science Book Award. His book Humans in Space: The Psychological Hurdles was given the 2016 IAA Life Science Book Award. In 2023, he published a textbook entitled Behavioral Health and Human Interactions in Space, which won the IAA Life Sciences Book Award for that year. He continues to write and consult on the psychosocial aspects of human space travel.
Prof. Kanas has collected antiquarian celestial maps for over 40 years and has given a number of talks on celestial cartography at public venues, such as the Adler Planetarium, the Lick Observatory, and the California Academy of Sciences (as a Benjamin Dean lecturer). He also has presented at the International Conference on the History of Cartography at Harvard; International Map Collectors Society Conferences in Wellington (New Zealand) and Vienna; the Society for the History of Astronomy Conference in Birmingham (England); and the Flamsteed Astronomical Society meeting in Greenwich (England). He has published articles on celestial cartography in magazines and journals, such as Sky and Telescope, Imago Mundi, and the Journal of the International Map Collectors Society. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (London). He has written two celestial map books: Star Maps: History, Artistry, and Cartography (now in its 3rd edition), and Solar System Maps: From Antiquity to the Space Age.
He has been an amateur astronomer for over 60 years and is an avid reader of science fiction. He has presented talks on space psychology and on celestial mapping at several regional and World Con science fiction conventions; published three factual articles on space psychology in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine (one of which won the annual readers’ poll award for 2015 Best Fact Article); and has published three science fiction novels: The New Martians, The Protos Mandate, and The Caloris Network. He has written a screenplay for The New Martians, which currently is being reviewed by various producers.
Prof. Kanas is a docent (human evolution track) at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. He enjoys interacting with the public (both adults and children) and helping them learn about the marvels of science.
