- First name
- Johannes
- Last name
- Hevelius
- Date of Birth
- 1611
- Date of Death
- 1687
- Born in
- Gdańsk
- Died in
- Gdańsk
Johannes Hevelius was a councillor and mayor of Gdańsk, then part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. As an astronomer he gained a reputation as the founder of lunar topography and described ten new constellations, seven of which are still recognized by astronomers. Hevelius had a large personal observatory (‘Sternenburg’). He preferred observation with the naked eye and used ancient instruments, like the Ptolemaic quadrant and the alidade (using the line of sight) for angular measurements. Hevelius charted the moon and named its landscapes (Selenographia sive lunae descriptio, 1647). He also observed sunspots, discovered comets (Cometographia, 1668) and added ten new star constellations visible from the mid-northern latitudes. Hevelius engraved his own books and owned a press to print his own his books. His correspondents included Mersenne, Gassendi, Kircher and Oldenburg. See: DSB, vol. 6, pp. 360–4; Winkler and Van Helden, 1993.
Hevelius and his Cometographia are discussed by Spinoza and Oldenburg in, for example, 1665.09.14-28, Ep. 29.