The Constellations
Hercules and Corona Borealis
The hero beside Ariadne's crown, on a card made to hold to a lamp.
- Chart
- Urania's Mirror
- Plate
- Plate 11
- 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 11 of Urania's Mirror, Sidney Hall's engraved set of 32 star cards, published in London by Samuel Leigh; this copy, hand-coloured etching on layered paper board, dates from about 1825. Hercules, the hero, shares the card with Corona Borealis, the northern crown, a small arc of stars that in classical myth was the crown Dionysus gave to the Cretan princess Ariadne and she set in the heavens. Other peoples saw a circle of elders, an eagle's nest, a bear's den. The cards came boxed with A Familiar Treatise on Astronomy by Jehoshaphat Aspin, and each star is pierced so the figures can be held up to the light.
See it on your wall
A window onto the heavens, in your home
Hercules and Corona Borealis 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.
