Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.15836

    Path of a comet

    Date
    19 March 1672
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p5
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (page): 310mm
    width (page): 203mm
    Subject
    Content object
    space
       > comet
    Description
    Erich Mauritius (1631-1691), Professor of Law at the University of Kiel and Assessor to the Imperial Court, wrote in a letter to Henry Oldenburg dated 19 March 1672 at Speyer about a comet observed in Strasbourg (March 1672). Mauritius also tried to observe the comet with a telescope which he complained was poor. Mauritius reported that the comet was observed by Julius Reichelt (1637-1719), Professor of Mathematics at Strasbourg, and included a printed chart of it.

    There are three copies of this print in the Royal Society's collections. This one, kept with the original letter, is not the one sent by Mauritius; the version sent by Mauritius is located at LBO/5/191b. There is another copy at LBO/5/191a. (See The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, ed. by A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, 13 vols (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press; London: Taylor and Francis, 1965-86), VIII (1971), 603n.)
    Transcription
    Figur und Stand dess Cometen, Wie solcher den 12.22. und 13.23. Martii Anno 1672. nach der Sonnen Niedergang zu Strassburg observirt worden.
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Related fellows
    Henry Oldenburg (1612 - 1677, German) , Scientific correspondent
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > France
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Germany
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