The Constellations
Draco and Ursa Minor
The first card of the set, at the top of the sky.
- Chart
- Urania's Mirror
- Plate
- Plate 1
- Astronomer
- Sidney Hall
- Date
- 1825
- Held by
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · via Wikimedia Commons
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
Plate 1 of Urania's Mirror, the first card of Sidney Hall's set of 32, published in London by Samuel Leigh at 18 Strand; this copy, an etching coloured by hand on layered paper board, dates from about 1825. The set opens at the top of the sky. Draco, the dragon, winds around the north pole of the ecliptic and never sets from northern latitudes; Ursa Minor carries Polaris, the pole star mariners steered by. The cards were advertised as showing all the constellations visible in the British Empire, a claim the second edition narrowed to Great Britain. Pierced at every star, the card becomes a small night sky against a lamp.
See it on your wall
A window onto the heavens, in your home
Draco and Ursa Minor 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 Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · 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.
