1640 Bayer Celestial Chart Auriga (1 results)

Very good. Manuscript writing on verso. Tab attached to left margin. Size 11 x 14.75 Inches. A charming c. 1640 example of Johannes Bayer's celestial chart of the zodiacal constellation Auriga ('the charioteer'), published in his seminal Uranometria , one of the most important celestial atlases of the early modern period. As the forerunner of all later celestial atlases, the significance and relevance of this work are emphasized by its continued publication throughout the mid-17th century. A Groundbreaking Atlas of the Heavens Bayer's Uranometria was built on the work of Tycho Brahe and Alessandro Piccolomini, but he added roughly a thousand additional stars. Bayer's breakthrough was, first, to fix all of these discovered stars to a reference grid (visible just inside the border) and, second, to provide a systematic format for their classification. Bayer's system - still in use - is known as the Bayer Designation. Bayer assigned Greek letters to each star of a given constellation in order of apparent size; thus, the brightest star of the Auriga constellation was classified as Alpha Aurigae (Capella, the sixth-brightest star in the night sky). Beta Aurigae (also known by its Arabic-derived name Menkalinan) appears near Auriga's left shoulder, Gamma Aurigae (considered by Bayer to be shared with the Taurus Constellation but now generally known only as Beta Tauri) sits at Auriga's left ankle, and so on. The river-like feature overlying the constellation is the Milky Way. The version contains extensive handwritten text on the verso, listing the largest stars in the constellation according to Bayer's system and describing the constellation in German. Publication History and Census A charming c. 1640 example of Johannes Bayer's celestial chart of the zodiacal constellation Auriga ('the charioteer'), published in his seminal Uranometria , one of the most important celestial atlases of the early modern period. As the forerunner of all later celestial atlases, the significance and relevance of this work are emphasized by its continued publication throughout the mid-17th century. References: Rumsey 12181.014 (1655 ed.). OCLC 435639611.