The Constellations
Canis Major, the Great Dog
The dog star in gold, from Bayer's atlas of 1603.
- Chart
- Uranometria
- Astronomer
- Johann Bayer
- Date
- 1603
- Held by
- raremaps.com · via Wikimedia Commons
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
A chart from Johann Bayer's Uranometria, Augsburg, 1603, engraved in copper by Alexander Mair; in this copy the stars are heightened in gold. Canis Major, the greater dog, follows Orion the hunter across the sky with its smaller companion, Canis Minor, and Ptolemy counted it among his 48 constellations in the second century. Its chief star is Sirius, the dog star, the brightest in the night sky, bright because it is both close to the Solar System and luminous in its own right. Bayer gave it the first letter of his new scheme, Alpha Canis Majoris, a name astronomers still write. On this sheet that star is touched with gold.
See it on your wall
A window onto the heavens, in your home
Canis Major, the Great Dog printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.
About this reproduction
- A faithful reproduction of a public-domain chart held by raremaps.com · via Wikimedia Commons — the work is centuries out of copyright.
- Printed to order on EMA matte art paper, 200gsm. Framed pieces sit in a box frame under acrylic, with no mount (gold-ink editions on specialist press).
- Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
- Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
- If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.
Why our charts cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans in existence, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the gold figures, the tiny stars, the cartouches — on a matte sheet that shows every line without glare.
