The Planetary Spheres Around the Earth

Ptolemy's universe, its spheres nested around a still Earth.

Chart: Harmonia Macrocosmica
Plate: Orbium Planetarum Terram Complectentium Scenographia
Astronomer: Andreas Cellarius
Date: 1708 edition of 1660
Held by: Biblioteca comunale di Trento · via Wikimedia Commons

Orbium Planetarum Terram Complectentium Scenographia

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, first published in Amsterdam by Johannes Janssonius in 1660 and reissued there in 1708 by Gerard Valck and Pieter Schenk. Its Latin title promises a view of the planetary orbs that enclose the Earth, and that is the old universe of Claudius Ptolemy: the Earth at the centre, the spheres of the Moon, the Sun and the planets nested around it like the layers of an onion. Cellarius set it among the copper-engraved plates that compared the systems of Ptolemy, Copernicus and Tycho Brahe. The atlas gives each system its own plates, and this one gives Ptolemy's its fullest view.

See it on your wall

A window onto the heavens, in your home

The Planetary Spheres Around the Earth printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

The Planetary Spheres Around the Earth framed on the wall

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