Catalog Archive
Auction 96, Lot 65

"Orthographia Praecipuae Domus Arcis Uraniburgi", Blaeu, (Family)

Subject: Astronomy

Period: 1662 (circa)

Publication: Atlas Maior, sive Cosmographia Blaviana

Color: Hand Color

Size:
19.5 x 16.5 inches
49.5 x 41.9 cm
Download High Resolution Image
(or just click on image to launch the Zoom viewer)

A very unusual elevation of Tycho Brahe's famous Uraniborg Observatory, the world's first observatory. Tycho Brahe was a Danish astronomer who lived between 1546-1601. For over twenty years, he made very accurate observations of the night sky, all without the aid of a telescope, which had not yet been invented. Throughout his career Tycho proceeded to build astronomical measuring instruments of unprecedented accuracy. Tycho was convinced of the falsity of the Ptolemaic/Aristotelian planetary model. Objecting to the motion of the Earth on physical and philosophical grounds, and unable to detect the annual parallax of the fixed stars predicted by the Copernican model, he rejected the latter as well, and as a compromise proposed the Tychonian Planetary Model, in which the Earth is at the center of the universe, the Sun orbits the Earth, but all other planets orbit the Sun.

References: Phillips (A) #3430.

Condition: B

Paper has been cleaned and re-colored, but there is slight text show through and traces of staining, most visible on verso.

Estimate: $1,000 - $1,100

Sold for: $575

Closed on 9/12/2001

Archived