The Constellations
Ursa Minor, the Little Bear
The pole star sailors steered by, marked 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, in a copy with the stars heightened in gold. Ursa Minor, the Little Bear, stands in the far northern sky. Its seven stars, four of them in the bowl, make the Little Dipper, and the bear's tail is the dipper's handle. Its brightest star is Polaris, the north pole star, which made the constellation the mariner's guide. Ptolemy listed it among his 48. Bayer lettered Polaris Alpha Ursae Minoris, and the name stands. The plates were engraved in copper by Alexander Mair from Tycho Brahe's positions. Every ship that steered north steered by the star in this bear's tail.
See it on your wall
A window onto the heavens, in your home
Ursa Minor, the Little Bear 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.
