The Constellations
Ursa Major, the Great Bear
The Great Bear, from an atlas printed in its maker's own house.
- 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
Ursa Major from the Firmamentum Sobiescianum, sive Uranographia of Johannes Hevelius, published in Gdańsk in 1690 in his Prodromus Astronomiae. The Great Bear is the third largest of the 88 constellations, its mythology reaching back into prehistory, and its seven main stars make the Big Dipper, the Plough, Charles's Wain. Hevelius worked from the observatory he built in 1641 across the roofs of his three connected houses, called the Star Castle. The atlas was printed in his own house at lavish expense, and he engraved many of its plates himself. The bear came off a rooftop in Gdańsk and a press downstairs.
See it on your wall
A window onto the heavens, in your home
Ursa Major, the Great Bear 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.
