Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.14775

    Occultation of Saturn

    Date
    19 June 1671
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p327a
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 143mm
    width (page): 146mm
    Subject
    Content object
    space
       > Solar system
          > planet
             > Saturn
    space
       > Solar system
          > Moon
    Description
    Print of the surface of the Moon with ink and grey wash annotation to indicate the phase of the Moon and the path of Saturn.

    The inscription at the top reads, in translation (Hall and Hall, vol. 8, p. 86): 'occultation of Saturn, observed at Danzig, Johannes Hevelius, 1 June 1671, in the morning'.

    From Hevelius's letter to Oldenburg dated 19 June 1671, which was read at the Royal Society on 2 November 1671, and published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 6, no. 78, p. 3027, without the figure.
    Object history
    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 2 November 1671, ‘Two Latin letters of Mr. Hevelius to Mr. Oldenburg, one of 19 June 1671, about an occultation of Saturn by the moon; another of October 7, 1671, containing several observations, as the late immersion of one of the Satellites of Jupiter into his shadow, the late eclipse of the moon, the late transit of Jupiter and the moon, and the present phasis of Saturn in regard of his rings; as also the reappearance of the two new stars in the neck of the whale, and near the beak of the Swan. These letters were referred to the professors of astronomy and geometry in Gresham-college to consider and make report of them to the Society’ (Birch 2:486).

    Printed in J. Hevelius, 'Some of his late celestial observations', Phil. Trans. vol. 6, no. 78 (December 1671), pp. 3027-33
    Related fellows
    Johannes Hevelius (1611 - 1687, German/Polish) , Astronomer
    Henry Oldenburg (1612 - 1677, German) , Scientific correspondent
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Poland
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