Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.15685

    Ring of Saturn

    Date
    7 October 1671
    Creator
    Johannes Hevelius (1611 - 1687, German/Polish) , Astronomer
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p8
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 223mm
    width (page): 161mm
    Subject
    Content object
    space
       > Solar system
          > planet
             > Saturn
    Description
    Figure of Saturn observed by Johannes Hevelius at Gdansk on 11 and 12 September 1671. This was included in his letter dated 7 October 1671 to Henry Oldenburg, who read it at the Royal Society's meeting on 2 November 1671.

    There is a copy at LBO/5/012.
    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).

    J. Hevelius, 'Some of his late celestial observations', Phil. Trans. vol. 6, no. 78 (December 1671), pp. 3027-33 (tab. 2, fig. 2).
    Related fellows
    Henry Oldenburg (1612 - 1677, German) , Scientific correspondent
    Johannes Hevelius (1611 - 1687, German/Polish) , Astronomer
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Poland
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