The Constellations
Cetus, the Sea Monster
The monster sent for Andromeda, its stars in gold.
- 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, its stars heightened in gold in this copy. Cetus is the sea monster of Greek myth, sent to devour Andromeda and slain by Perseus, and its stars straddle the celestial equator. Bayer took the positions from Tycho Brahe's catalogue, and his atlas was the first to cover the whole sphere. Among the monster's stars is one Bayer lettered Omicron Ceti. Fifty-nine years later, in a book of 1662, Johannes Hevelius named it Mira, the Wonderful, for the way it fades and returns. On this sheet it is still only a letter, waiting for its story.
See it on your wall
A window onto the heavens, in your home
Cetus, the Sea Monster 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.
