The Aratean Universe

A cosmos drawn under the name of a Greek poet.

Chart: Harmonia Macrocosmica
Plate: Planisphaerium Arateum
Astronomer: Andreas Cellarius
Date: 1708 edition of 1660
Held by: Biblioteca comunale di Trento · via Wikimedia Commons

Planisphaerium Arateum

Format

The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

A plate from Andreas Cellarius's Harmonia Macrocosmica, Amsterdam, 1660, in the 1708 issue by Gerard Valck and Pieter Schenk. Its full title sets out the frame of the world's orbs after the Aratean hypothesis, laid flat on a plane. Aratus of Soli, a Greek poet who lived from about 315 to 240 BC, wrote the Phaenomena, a poem in hexameters describing the constellations, its first half a verse setting of a lost work by Eudoxus of Cnidus. The poem was loved across the Greek and Roman world and commented on for centuries. Nineteen hundred years after him, Cellarius set a cosmos under the poet's name among the scientific systems of his own day.

See it on your wall

A window onto the heavens, in your home

The Aratean Universe 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 Biblioteca comunale di Trento · 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.

From the same astronomer