Review
Johann and Elizabeth Hevelius, astronomers of Danzig
Section snippets
The observatory at Danzig
Hevelius constructed his instruments and began his observations of the stars some 30 years before Flamsteed had his up-to-date telescopic instruments at Greenwich. Hevelius saw himself as the successor of Tycho Brahe and, like Tycho, he used open sights (essentially a rod with slits at the two ends) to point on stars, for he distrusted the then-still-novel telescope for such measurements4. He measured the angular distances between two stars with a sextant, which is a frame carrying a 60° arc
Elizabeth the observer
In Figure 1, Elizabeth is at the fixed sight and is making a fine adjustment of the frame of the sextant with a screw while Hevelius himself is setting the movable arm on the second star with another screw adjustment. In his account of the sextant in the Machina Coelestis, Hevelius says that his wife assisted him diligently in his observations and was a valuable collaborator. He explained the need for two observers to use the great sextant and that, for many years, his dearest wife (‘conjugam
Edmond Halley at the observatory
Of all the visitors to the Observatory, the most notable and the one whom Hevelius most appreciated was Edmond Halley. Halley was there for two months in the early summer of 1679, when he was about 23, which is 45 years younger than Hevelius and about nine years younger than Elizabeth. He had just spent a year in St Helena observing the positions of southern stars, which had given him a European reputation. He had used the most advanced instruments – telescopic sights, micrometer eyepieces and
Posthumous works
Halley figures in Hevelius’ last work, which appeared posthumously, brought out by Elizabeth as Prodromus Astronomiae11. The Prodromus is, in effect, the final account of Hevelius’s work in the years of his marriage to Elizabeth. Perhaps because his young wife had now become an able collaborator, he devoted himself more consistently to preparing a new catalogue of the positions of stars. The first part of the Machina Coelestis describes the instruments of his observatory; the second part (Books
Last years
As the wife of a prominent citizen and an astronomer of a European reputation, Elizabeth must have had many guests and other visitors to entertain. Elizabeth and Hevelius seem to have gathered a friendly company around them, to judge by Halley’s references to his time in Danzig, and he and Fullenius clearly remembered Elizabeth with pleasure. Hearne’s story, however exaggerated and embroidered, reflects Elizabeth as an attractive woman and a charming hostess. It is sad that we do not know more
References (11)
Selenographia
(1647)Machina Coelestis
(1679)Machina Coelestis
(1673)- Hevelius did, however, have a number of telescopes, some very long, that he used for other sorts of...
Cited by (1)
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Domestic astronomy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
2021, The Palgrave Handbook of Women and Science since 1660
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Sir Alan Cook FRS is Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy Emeritus and former Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge. His new biography of Edmond Halley appeared in 1998. He edits the Notes and Records of the Royal Society.