The Constellations
Cepheus, the King
The king of Aethiopia, drawn from behind in 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, published in Augsburg in 1603 by Christoph Mang. Cepheus is a constellation of the deep northern sky, named for a king of Aethiopia in Greek myth, and one of Ptolemy's 48. Bayer's engraver, Alexander Mair, kept the old habit of drawing the human figures from behind, as if seen from outside the sky looking in, while Bayer plotted the stars as seen from the Earth looking up. The mix left some old star names pointing to the wrong shoulder. Delta Cephei, lettered here by Bayer, later gave its name to a whole class of stars, the Cepheid variables.
See it on your wall
A window onto the heavens, in your home
Cepheus, the King 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.
