The Zodiac
Cancer, as a Lobster
A sign of the zodiac that quietly changed species.
- Chart
- Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia
- Astronomer
- Johannes Hevelius
- Date
- 1690
- 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
Cancer from Johannes Hevelius's Firmamentum Sobiescianum, sive Uranographia, published in Gdańsk in 1690 in his Prodromus Astronomiae. Cancer, the crab of the zodiac, is a faint constellation, its brightest star only of magnitude 3.5, with the open cluster Praesepe at its heart. Hevelius drew it not as a crab but as a lobster. His catalogue in the same work listed 1,564 stars, and the atlas was printed in his own house, many of its plates engraved by his own hand. The zodiac is the oldest part of the sky we have, and here one of its signs has changed species without asking anyone.
See it on your wall
A window onto the heavens, in your home
Cancer, as a Lobster 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.
