Andreas Cellarius, Atlas coelestis seu Harmonia Macrocosmica

INTRODUCTION
- Man and the stars
SECTION I
- The dawn of astronomy: Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Biblical Cosmos
SECTION II
- The cosmos becomes a sphere
SECTION III
- The geometry of the cosmos
SECTION IV
- The skies of Islam
SECTION V
- Evangelisation of the cosmos
SECTION VI
- The Renaissance of Astronomy
SECTION VII
- Galileo: the cosmos through the telescope
SECTION VIII
- From Galileo to Newton

Atlas coelestis seu Harmonia Macrocosmica

Planispheric projection of the celestial sphere

Andreas Cellarius, Atlas coelestis seu Harmonia Macrocosmica - pl. 15

Zoom

Andreas Cellarius (1596-1665)
Atlas cœlestis seu Harmonia Macrocosmica, Amsterdam, 1660
Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. 5._.81, pl. 15

An illustration of the geometrical solutions devised by Ptolemy to explain the planets' retrograde motion. The Earth is surrounded by the orbit of a single planet which advances along the epicycle, pulled by the deferent. At bottom right we see a solution based on the eccentric position of the Earth. The diagram at the bottom left shows the same solution for the movement of the Sun.