Star maps & Tarotification of modern astronomy

General
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What happened to all proper maps of space/cosmos? I do recall seeing them in astronomy books in “dark ancient times” dominated by evil professionalism, alongside tables filled with pages upon pages of numbers. Black dots of varied sizes alongside lines and referential projections. All at the time poor bastards had to likely made (calculate) entire model with bunch of strings and logarithmic sliders.

Now, in 2026 not only we have are no proper 3d maps (technology advancements rendering any past excuse about issues of presenting space on papers flat surface mute) despite computers having all tools necessary in excessive abundance (and that include power for decades now)…
By the way: programming & 3D modeling should be half of any astronomy vocation curriculum these days! What else is there that could ever be more useful?
…not only there are none of those, there doesn’t seem even paper/prints are available, that would be newer than 30 years old (since rather significant amount of new information become available) I was looking today and it was impossible to find even relics of the past I mentioned earlier!

What is available in regard to books is either stuff that would qualify for preschool/elementary children’s book, or something slightly more professionally looking (by it I mean less colors usually, and that peculiar shade of blue) that could have impress uneducated peasant in the 30’s (random artist visions and sky maps that may have been redrawn from few milenia old charts - and seeing fascination with mother astronomic achievements, even that with embarrassing accuracy).

Was the word Colonization present behind the notion of any sort of space expansion too offensive for someone? Or worry about potential carbon emissions on Venus? Or is astronomy becoming the new alchemy where even most basic knowledge is stripped of the populace and hoarded as some mystic art, despite being something average kid can learn & comprehend in single evening? What has happened? Are we done with it being a science? I would understand it to a degree if astronomy happen to bring some bacon home - but to my knowledge, it is still being funded from our/everyone’s taxes…

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Welcome to Astronomy.com!

We got so smart we have it all at a mouse click now.
What I wanna know is who is renaming everything to dumb things like the Pac-Man Nebula, and Casper the friendly Ghost Nebula?
Sigh. Better than Greek or Latin, I guess. But it is rather disappointing sometimes.

Our eldest Granddaughter is a Head Librarian of her own Public library in Seattle, WA. She sent me a really beautiful book of the James Web Telescope’s images. It’s very nice. But I still use Stellarium for my acquisitions…

When you get to be my age, easy becomes a pre-requisite.
Google Maps is my co-pilot. :rofl: (When there is service…)

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Right.

Well this sort of things (naming) seem meaningless in grand scheme of things, so why not ignore it?

Anyway…: I have done some quick research over last few days, and the few books that looked promising/professional could be summarized: “bigger zoom than when Greeks were the astronomy experts…”.
So, following old maxim: “Fine, I will do it myself” I officially added creating proper star map/chart to my project queue. I will push into the wide world some of that cutting edge Copernican advancements…. The very end of queue mentioned really, however given relative simplicity and unique opportunity to eternally shame entire field of science :wink: I may be able to squeeze it into one of earlier opportunities.

@Elon’s-Orrery-Crank-Turning-Person.
My Preemptive Apologies.

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When the power goes out , those star charts printed on paper are all you’ll have .