Timeline of astronomical maps, catalogs, and surveys

• c. 1800 BC — Babylonian star catalog
• c. 1370 BC; Observations for the Babylonia MUL.APIN.
• c. 350 BC — Shi Shen's star catalog has almost 800 entries
• c. 300 BC — star catalog of Timocharis of Alexandria
• c. 134 BC — Hipparchus makes a detailed star map
• c. 140 — Ptolemy completes his Almagest, which contains a catalog of stars, observations of planetary motions, and treatises on geometry and cosmology
• c. 705 — Dunhuang Star Chart, a manuscript star chart from the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang
• c. 750 — The first Zij treatise, Az-Zij ‛alā Sinī al-‛Arab, written by Ibrahim al-Fazari and Muhammad al-Fazari
• c. 777 — Yaqūb ibn Tāriq's Az-Zij al-Mahlul min as-Sindhind li-Darajat Daraja
• c. 830 — Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī's Zij al-Sindhind
• c. 840 — Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Kathīr al-Farghānī's Compendium of the Science of the Stars
• c. 900 — Muhammad ibn Jābir al-Harrānī al-Battānī's Az-Zij as-Sabi
• 964 — Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi 's star catalog Book of the Fixed Stars
• 1031 — Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī's al-Qanun al-Mas'udi, making first use of a planisphere projection, and discussing the use of the astrolabe and the armillary sphere.
• 1088 — The first almanac is the Almanac of Azarqueil written by Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī
• 1115–1116 — Al-Khazini's Az-Zij as-Sanjarī
• c. 1150 — Gerard of Cremona publishes Tables of Toledo based on the work of Azarqueil
• 1252–1270 — Alfonsine tables recorded by order of Alfonso X
• 1272 — Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī's Zij-i Ilkhani
• 1395 — Cheonsang Yeolcha Bunyajido star map created at the order of King Taejo
• c. 1400 — Jamshīd al-Kāshī's Khaqani Zij
• 1437 — Publication of Ulugh Beg's Zij-i-Sultani
• 1551 — Prussian Tables by Erasmus Reinhold
• late 16th century — Tycho Brahe updates Ptolemy's Almagest
• 1577–1580 — Taqi al-Din's Unbored Pearl
• 1598 — Tycho Brahe publishes his "Thousand Star Catalog"
• 1603 — Johann Bayer's Uranometria
• 1627 — Johannes Kepler publishes his Rudolphine Tables of 1006 stars from Tycho plus 400 more
• 1678 — Edmund Halley publishes a catalog of 341 southern stars, the first systematic southern sky survey
• 1712 — Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley publish a catalog based on data from a Royal Astronomer who left all his data under seal, the official version would not be released for another decade.
• 1725 — Posthumous publication of John Flamsteed's Historia Coelestis Britannica
• 1771 — Charles Messier publishes his first list of nebulae
• 1824 — Urania's Mirror by Sidney Hall
• 1862 — Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander publishes his final edition of the Bonner Durchmusterung catalog of stars north of declination -1°.
• 1864 — John Herschel publishes the General Catalogue of nebulae and star clusters
• 1887 — Paris conference institutes Carte du Ciel project to map entire sky to 14th magnitude photographically
• 1890 — John Dreyer publishes the New General Catalogue of nebulae and star clusters
• 1932 — Harlow Shapley and Adelaide Ames publish A Survey of the External Galaxies Brighter than the Thirteenth Magnitude, later known as the Shapley-Ames Catalog
• 1948 — Antonín Bečvář publishes the Skalnate Pleso Atlas of the Heavens
• 1950–1957 — Completion of the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey with the Palomar 48-inch Schmidt optical reflecting telescope. Actual date quoted varies upon source.
• 1962 — A.S. Bennett of the Cambridge Radio Astronomy Group publishes the Revised 3C Catalogue of 328 radio sources
• 1965 — Gerry Neugebauer and Robert Leighton begin a 2.2 micrometre sky survey with a 1.6-meter telescope on Mount Wilson
• 1982 — IRAS space observatory completes an all-sky mid-infrared survey
• 1990 — Publication of APM Galaxy Survey of 2+ million galaxies, to study large-scale structure of the cosmos
• 1991 — ROSAT space observatory begins an all-sky X-ray survey
• 1993 — Start of the 20 cm VLA FIRST survey
• 1997 — Two Micron All Sky Survey commences, first version of Hipparcos Catalogue published
• 1998 — Sloan Digital Sky Survey commences
• 2003 — 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey published; 2MASS completes
• 2012 — On March 14, 2012, a new atlas and catalog of the entire infrared sky as imaged by Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer was released.<