Machina Coelestis

Johannes Hevelius (1611-1687) is justly famous as an astronomer, but his livelihood came from the family’s brewing business, and Johannes himself was admitted to the Brewer’s Guild in 1636. His interests lay elsewhere, however. Devoting himself to constructing astronomical instruments and, most importantly, to carefully and precisely grinding lenses for telescopes, he developed an extremely well-equipped 17th-century observatory in Danzig, Poland. The first volume of the Machina Coelestis, profusely illustrated with copper engravings, describes these instruments and the interior of his observatory. The second volume, which records his observations from 1630 to 1679, had just been returned to him by the printer when a fire burned down Hevelius' house, destroying his instruments, library, and almost the whole edition of this volume. Only a few copies survived, which had previously been sent to personal friends. In the last years of his life, Hevelius rebuilt his observatory and published a continuation of the second volume.