![[SCHEINER, Christoph (1573-1650)]. Tres epistolæ de maculis solaribus scriptae ad Marcum Velserum … Cum obseruationum iconismis. Augsburg: ad insigne pinus, 5 January 1612.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2017/CKS/2017_CKS_14298_0317_001(scheiner_christoph_sol_elliptic_hoc_est_novum_perpetuumsolis_contra_hi031626).jpg?w=1)
![[SCHEINER, Christoph (1573-1650)]. Tres epistolæ de maculis solaribus scriptae ad Marcum Velserum … Cum obseruationum iconismis. Augsburg: ad insigne pinus, 5 January 1612.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2017/CKS/2017_CKS_14298_0317_002(scheiner_christoph_sol_elliptic_hoc_est_novum_perpetuumsolis_contra_hi031643).jpg?w=1)
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Details
[SCHEINER, Christoph (1573-1650)]. Tres epistolæ de maculis solaribus scriptae ad Marcum Velserum … Cum obseruationum iconismis. Augsburg: ad insigne pinus, 5 January 1612.
4° (190 x 142mm). Pine tree device on title, folding engraved plate by Alexander Mair, one full-page engraving in text. Correction slip signed Apelles between quires A and B. (Plate with old repair to verso, 55mm. tear along one fold, and several other marginal tears, title lightly stained and with nicks to foremargin, verso with small repair at upper margin, final blank lacking.) Old vellum, later manuscript title on spine (recased, new endpapers, covers bowed, cockling to endpapers). Provenance: erased shelf marks and small indistinct ownership stamp on title.
THE DISCOVERY OF SUNSPOTS. Having been appointed professor of Hebrew and mathematics at Ingolstadt the previous year, Scheiner constructed his own telescope and with it detected the remarkable phenomenon of spots on the sun in March 1611. He believed that the spots were small planets circling the sun but, as a Jesuit, he was unable to publish this overwhelming evidence in support of Copernicanism under his own name; instead he communicated the discovery to his friend Marcus Welser (1558-1614) in Augsburg. This was Scheiner's first series of letters to Welser, who printed them the year following, and sent copies abroad to Galileo and Kepler among others (see DSB XII, p.151). They occasioned Galileo's Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle machie solari e loro accidenti (Rome, 1613) in the form of three letters to Welser, arguing that the spots were actually on the rotating sun and not tiny satellites of it; in the domestic issue, Scheiner's letters were even printed at the conclusion of Gaileo's work under his pseudonym of Apelles. Despite the differences in interpretation, enlivened by the dispute over priority, the same telescopic evidence had persuaded both astronomers of the correctness of the Copernican system. VERY RARE. VD17 only locates three copies at Munich, Wolfenbuttel and Leipzig. RBH records only one sale in 1976. BL/STC 17th-century German Books S-592; Carli and Favaro p.11; Cinti 39; not in Honeyman or Norman.
4° (190 x 142mm). Pine tree device on title, folding engraved plate by Alexander Mair, one full-page engraving in text. Correction slip signed Apelles between quires A and B. (Plate with old repair to verso, 55mm. tear along one fold, and several other marginal tears, title lightly stained and with nicks to foremargin, verso with small repair at upper margin, final blank lacking.) Old vellum, later manuscript title on spine (recased, new endpapers, covers bowed, cockling to endpapers). Provenance: erased shelf marks and small indistinct ownership stamp on title.
THE DISCOVERY OF SUNSPOTS. Having been appointed professor of Hebrew and mathematics at Ingolstadt the previous year, Scheiner constructed his own telescope and with it detected the remarkable phenomenon of spots on the sun in March 1611. He believed that the spots were small planets circling the sun but, as a Jesuit, he was unable to publish this overwhelming evidence in support of Copernicanism under his own name; instead he communicated the discovery to his friend Marcus Welser (1558-1614) in Augsburg. This was Scheiner's first series of letters to Welser, who printed them the year following, and sent copies abroad to Galileo and Kepler among others (see DSB XII, p.151). They occasioned Galileo's Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle machie solari e loro accidenti (Rome, 1613) in the form of three letters to Welser, arguing that the spots were actually on the rotating sun and not tiny satellites of it; in the domestic issue, Scheiner's letters were even printed at the conclusion of Gaileo's work under his pseudonym of Apelles. Despite the differences in interpretation, enlivened by the dispute over priority, the same telescopic evidence had persuaded both astronomers of the correctness of the Copernican system. VERY RARE. VD17 only locates three copies at Munich, Wolfenbuttel and Leipzig. RBH records only one sale in 1976. BL/STC 17th-century German Books S-592; Carli and Favaro p.11; Cinti 39; not in Honeyman or Norman.
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