Great, early constellation map of Scorpio. The plate was originally included in the forty-eight maps of the individual constellations in Bayer's Utanometria in 1603. This is from the first reissue, without text on verso. The stars are identified by letters; Greek for the brightest, Roman for the fainter, with the order of the alphabets corresponding to decreasing brightness of the stars. Although a similar scheme had been introduced by Piccolomini (1540), it was Bayer's scheme that became universally accepted. Bayer based his constellation figures on the work of Jacobo de Gheyn and included stars from Ptolemy as well as the recent observations of Tycho Brahe and Keyser.

References: Warner, pp. 18-19.

Condition: B

Couple of small tears in margins and binding holes at fold, with old repairs when the piece was rebound, probably in the 18th century.