The Zodiac
Cancer and Leo
The crab and the lion, from Bode's Berlin atlas of 1801.
- Chart
- Uranographia
- Astronomer
- Johann Elert Bode
- Date
- 1801
- Held by
- e-rara.ch, Swiss rare-book libraries · 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 plate from Johann Elert Bode's Uranographia, Berlin, 1801: the crab and the lion of the zodiac. Leo, to the Greeks the Nemean Lion killed by Heracles in his twelve labours, is one of the easiest constellations to find, its bright stars making a shape that recalls a crouching lion. Cancer beside it is faint, its brightest star only of magnitude 3.5, with the cluster Praesepe at its heart. Bode's atlas set out to be exact about every star and generous with every figure. The same year it appeared, Giuseppe Piazzi found Ceres at the distance Bode's law predicted. It was a good year for Bode.
See it on your wall
A window onto the heavens, in your home
Cancer and Leo 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 e-rara.ch, Swiss rare-book libraries · 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.
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