Antique Star Chart 1708 — Planisphaerium Copernicanum

A celestial map of the Copernican system, published in Amsterdam in 1708

Planisphaerium Copernicanum sive systema universi totius creati ex hypothesi — a planisphere of Copernicus, or the system of the whole created universe on his hypothesis, set out on a flat sheet. The sun sits at the centre, the planets run their orbits around it, the earth is one of them, and the zodiac closes the whole thing in an outer ring. It is an argument drawn as a diagram: in 1708 the heliocentric order was still one hypothesis among several, and this plate belongs to a set in which the rival systems each got a sheet of their own.

Galileo on the same sheet

Around Jupiter the engraver drew four small bodies. Those are the moons Galileo first saw in 1610, and they are the reason the sheet is more than decoration: a planet with satellites of its own was the observation that made a sun-centred system thinkable. The plate carries them as a matter of course, less than a century after they were found.

The plate, the publishers and the year

The Rijksmuseum gives two dates for this sheet, and both are true of it: the plate was cut in 1660, and this impression was published in an atlas in 1708. The publishers named on it are Pieter Schenk the elder and Gerard Valck of Amsterdam, who bought the old copper plates and reissued the series under their own imprint. We date the card by the object you are getting — 1708 — and keep 1660 for the plate. The engraver is not named; the record calls the maker anonymous, and says engraving without naming a metal.

Your file

How to print

• Pick the archive whose proportions match your frame, so nothing is cropped or stretched.
• Ask for matte fine-art paper, printed in sRGB with auto-enhancement off. A near-square sheet like this one wants a square mount rather than a landscape frame.
• Where to print it: print shops near you and checked prices at online labs.

Source and rights

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, object number RP-P-AO-29-1-6. The museum publishes the image as public domain under the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0. There is no TIFF master in the package. Catalogue record: Rijksmuseum →

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