astronomy

First edition. An influential astronomy tutor which ran to several editions. ‘In August 1835 Main was appointed chief assistant at the Royal Greenwich Observatory under Sir George Airy, whom he served with loyalty and efficiency for twenty-five years... Main succeeded Johnson as Radcliffe observer on 19 June 1860, and resided at Oxford from 1 October 1860’. He made significant observations in both posts (notably on Venus, Saturn and fixed stars), presenting his findings to the Royal Astronomical Society. At Oxford he compiled and edited the second Radcliffe catalogue of stars and he has craters named after him on both the moon and Mars.

First edition of this observational survey of the solar system, including the earliest accurate maps of the surface of Mars, establishing the discipline of aerography (a derivation form ‘Ares’ the Greek god of Mars). Wilhelm Beer and Johan Mädler made systematic telescopic observations of Mars from 1830, the year in which the planet passed closest to earth. Their goal was to refine Herschel’s calculations of its period of rotation — just over 24 hours — which had prompted speculation about the red planet’s similarities to our own. In doing so they made a close survey of spots and other markings, trying to understand those which might give clues to the composition of the Martian surface and those which were atmospheric and created the drawings on which the Mars plates in the Fragments were prepared. They were accurate enough to plainly ‘distinguish the two most notable features of Mars Syrtis Major (looking like India), and Lacus Solis (looking like a large eye)’ (Ashworth, Linda Hall website https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/wilhelm-beer/). The multiple small diagrams of Mars on 6 plates appear for the first time, while the larger double-hemisphere plate had previously appeared in a journal article in Astronomische Nachrichten of 1838. The book was published in German in 1841 as Beiträge zur physischen Kenntniss der himmlischen Körper im Sonnensysteme. Both authors contributions are commemorated with Martian craters named after them.
Houzeau and Lancaster 1332.

First separate edition, with a large folding plate depicting a planisphere built to desmonstrate the author’s alternative astronomical system.
Demonville had been a printer (son of a printer to the Académie française) but diversified as a maker of globes and scientific instruments after losing his licence to print in Paris. In the year of publication, he acquired notoriety as an astronomical crank who denied the systems of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Halley and Herschel. His planispehere demonstrates his alternative cosmos ― with the earth, the sun and the moon the only genuine astronomical bodies (the moon 250 leagues from the earth and the sun just 1500), the earth not rotating (merely ‘nodding’ a little over the course of a year), the stars affixed to a crystalline sphere and the planets with no corporeal existence. Demonville hawked his system around Paris and London (with both his books and instruments), even obtaining an audience with William III, who had to ask the Royal Society for their opinion. With his longitude pamphlets, such as ours, he sought to obtain prizes from the Societies of Paris and London but he was pilloried in the press and his ideas were roundly dismissed.
This pamphlet though here separately issued (with its own title-page and errata leaf forming a wrapper) was also issued simultaneously as a suite to the author’s Question de longitude sur mer (1833). The final 4 leaves are adverts for the author’s controversial mechanical planispheres, one of which is illustrated in the very large folding plate. Both issues rare.

First published in 1865 and hugely popular, this copy of the seventh edition is from the library of Napoleon III.