The Constellations
Ophiuchus and Serpens
The last of the house's serpent-bearers, two centuries after Bayer's.
- 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, published in Berlin in 1801 in twenty copper plates: Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer, with Serpens, the snake he grasps. The figure straddles the celestial equator and was one of Ptolemy's 48; the snake is a constellation of its own. Bode's companion catalogue, the Allgemeine Beschreibung und Nachweisung der Gestirne, listed 17,240 stars. The Uranographia is counted the high point of the artistic constellation figure, and Bode's serpent-bearer is the latest of the four in the house, coming nearly two hundred years after Bayer drew his in Augsburg.
See it on your wall
A window onto the heavens, in your home
Ophiuchus and Serpens 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.
