A map of the moon with labeled features, from Selenographia by Johannes Hevelius. Public Domain In the rare books collection of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, a large tome tied with ...

A series of events focusing on the legacy of the famous astronomer Johannes Hevelius (known in Polish as Jan Heweliusz) will be held in Oxford on 29–30 October. Jan Heweliusz, also known as Johannes ...

Of all the constellations in the April night sky, one of the dimmest and most ignored is Sextans the Sextant. Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius created Sextans Uraniae (now just Sextans) in 1687 to ...

Click to open image viewer. CC0 Usage Conditions ApplyClick for more information. If you want to see the stars, why not build a telescope that touches the sky? This might have been astronomer, ...

This month, I take you on a search for the most understated of all the official 88 constellations. Many of us have hunted popular deep-sky objects among its stars. I’m talking about Asterion, the ...

There are 88 officially recognized constellations. Of these, 48 are known as ancient or original, meaning they were talked about by the Greeks and probably by the Babylonians and still earlier peoples ...

Ibn al-Haytham (“Alhasen”) on the left pedestal of reason [while Galileo is on the right pedestal of the senses] as shown on the frontispiece of the Selenographia (Science of the Moon; 1647) of ...

The modern constellations are an unusual bunch — here's a tour of the highlights. Ever wonder about what folks used to do for entertainment hundreds or even thousands of years ago? Back then, there ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. There are 88 officially recognized constellations in the sky, and these astronomical patterns ...

Gazing at the heavens arrayed before us—at least as pictured in a 1690 Polish volume on display in a fascinating exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art—we see Urania, the goddess of astronomy, ...

Besides the big and little dogs (Canis Major and Canis Minor) there’s another pair of hounds in the night sky called Canes Venatici. Let’s pronounce that once — KAY-neez veh-NA-teh-si. It rhymes with ...