The Theory of the Moon

The Moon's uneven pace, followed with circles alone.

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

Theoria Lunae

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, the engraving credited to Jan van Loon. Its title: the theory of the Moon, showing its motion by eccentric and epicycle. The eccentric is a circle whose centre sits off the Earth; the epicycle is a smaller circle riding on the larger one. Together they let the old astronomy follow the Moon's uneven pace around the sky using nothing but circles. The atlas set out how each system explained the motions of the Sun, the Moon and the planets, and this is the Moon's page, drawn with a draughtsman's patience.

See it on your wall

A window onto the heavens, in your home

The Theory of the Moon printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

The Theory of the Moon 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