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The Transit of the Great Comet of 1664
Rare celestial map showing both the figural representations of the constellations and the stars of which they are composed, which appeared in Stanislaus Lubienieck's Theatrum Cometicum, one of the great illustrated works on comets of the 17th Century.
The title notes that the observations are from a source in Ingolstadt.
The map from Lubienicki's Theatrum Cometicum are rare on the market.
Lubieniecki's encyclopedic treatise gathered together the observations of dozens of his contemporaries including Bayer and Hevelius, covering all known comets up to the year 1665. The fine engravings consist of celestial maps showing the paths of comets and the figures of the constellations traversed. "Since each map represents the observations of a different astronomer, taken together they illustrate the variety of cartographic traditions popular during the seventeenth century." (Warner, The Sky Explored, p. 164). The second part ) provides a chronology of 415 comet sightings from the flood (the first report is dated to 2312 BC) to 1665, with commentaries, drawn from a range of historical sources.
Rarity
Lubieniecki's book is rarely encountered in anything near a complete state. Only two complete copies of the first edition are recorded at auction since 1975 by ABPC: the Honeyman and Dunham copies. Of the three copies held by the British Library, two are substantially defective.
Stanisław Lubieniecki was a Polish Socinian theologist, historian, astronomer, and writer. He published an important work on comets, entitled Theatrum cometicum, duabus partibus constans, an illustrated anthology of 415 comets from the biblical epoch of the deluge up until 1665.
![[Terrestrial Globe Gore] and [Celestial Globe Gore]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/91969.jpg)
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