Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.15551

    Paper cutting of Saturn

    Date
    16 November 1665
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p2
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 145mm
    width (page): 205mm
    Subject
    Content object
    space
       > Solar system
          > planet
             > Saturn
    Description
    A paper cutting of Saturn as observed on 13 October 1665 at Mamhead near Exeter by William Balle. The original cutting was enclosed in a letter dated 16 November 1665 to Henry Oldenburg by Robert Moray, who had been encouraging Balle to make astronomical observations. Moray asked that another figure be cut and sent on to the president, Viscount Brouncker.
    Balle's original cut is now lost. Oldenburg made copies, one of which was stuck in the Early Letters with the letter from Balle to Oldenburg of the 14th of April 1666. Another copy of this figure was sent by Oldenburg to Christian Huygens on 21 November 1665. Balle's observation was printed, with a figure, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 1, no. 9 (1665).
    Transcription
    Oct. 13. hor. 6. seen at Mamhead near Exeter in Devon by W[illiam] B[alle], with a telescope near 38 foot long and a double eyeglasse
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    Fig. 3 in William Ball, ‘Of an Observation, not Long Since Made in England, of Saturn’, Phil. Trans. vol. 1, no. 9 (1665), pp. 152-53.
    Related fellows
    William Balle (1627 - 1690, British) , Astronomer
    Henry Oldenburg (1612 - 1677, German) , Scientific correspondent
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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