Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.14797

    Path of a comet

    Date
    March 1672
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p191b
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (page): 150mm
    width (page): 162mm
    Subject
    Content object
    space
       > comet
    Description
    Etching of a path of a comet marked on a map of constellations.

    Erich Mauritius (1631-1691), Professor of Law at the University of Kiel and Assessor to the Imperial Court, wrote in a letter to Oldenburg dated 19 March 1672 at Speyer about a comet observed in Strasbourg (12-13 March 1672) that Mauritius also tried to observe with a telescope, which he complained was poor. Mauritius reported that the comet was observed by Julius Reichelt, Professor of Mathematics at Strasbourg, and included a printed chart of it. This print, now transferred to the Letter Book, bears the inked-in position of the comet on the 16th and 17th observed by Mauritius, and must have been included with the original letter, now EL/M1/68 (The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, vol. 8, p. 603n).

    There are other copies of this print at LBO/5/191a and EL/M1/68/005.
    Related fellows
    Henry Oldenburg (1612 - 1677, German) , Scientific correspondent
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Germany
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > France
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