Very rare first Latin edition of one of Sebastian Münster’s (1488-1552) earliest astronomical works, the Canones super Novum Instrumentum Luminarium, a treatise on the use of an elaborate device known as the Instrumentum Novum (‘New Instrument’). The volume instructs users how to calculate such astronomical information as the appearance of..... More

Early edition of one of the rarest 16th-century German-language instrument books on the construction of sundials. First published in 1539 and reprinted the following year, this is probably the third edition. All are very rare. Strasbourg imprints on technology are highly unusual, and in Chrisman's analytic bibliography of Strasbourg books..... More

An attractive and genuine example – with all volvelles present – of this copiously illustrated Paris edition (1553) of one of the most important astronomical and geographic texts of the Renaissance, Petrus Apianus’ Cosmographia. The work’s large, cordiform world map contains the most influential 16th-century representation of the New World..... More

Rare editions of the first printed star atlas and “the first handbook for stargazers” (Gingerich). The visual depiction of the night sky in Alessandro Piccolomini’s (1508-1579) La Sfera and De le Stelle Fisse, first published in 1540, departed radically from the anthropomorphized woodcut figures of individual constellations that preceded it..... More

Very rare first edition, second issue of this understudied work, “apparently the earliest Italian imprint to depict and discuss the Copernican system” (Gingerich) by the Cologne-born Professor of Mathematics at Padua. The work includes a printed diagram of the geo-heliocentric system of Martianus Capella (41r) as well as a diagram..... More

Very rare manuscript user’s manual for the famous terrestrial and celestial globes by the van Langren cartographic dynasty, notable as the first to employ the highly accurate star observations of the “tresfameux” Tycho Brahe – whose contribution is duly acknowledged (fol. 9v). Well into the age of print, these manuals..... More

Very rare first and only edition – illustrated with 4 ‘paper instruments’ complete with their volvelles – of this understudied early 17th-century treatise on astrological prognostication, a work of some note for its recognition (and acceptance) of recent groundbreaking telescopic discoveries made by Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and others. Published in..... More

First edition of this exceptionally rare and remarkable book on nebulae, the first of its kind, illustrated with striking white-on-black woodcuts. It is also a work of profound cosmological speculation placing it at the forefront of astronomical thought in the 17th century. Giovanni Battista Odierna (1597–1660) suggests in this work..... More

Rare edition and a fine copy of Galgemayr's very influential text describing the construction & use of two instruments, a proportional compass and a lineal compass for the measurement of volumes and surfaces. The former, closely resembling Galileo's proportional compass, was a popular calculating device used throughout the 17th C...... More

Extremely rare German edition (a Latin edition was published the same year) of Sturm’s enlargement of Habrecht’s famous treatise on the making of celestial and terrestrial globes, published in 1628. The Habrecht family of clock and instrument makers were famous throughout Europe from the last quarter of the sixteenth century to..... More

Very rare first edition of the Jesuit scientist Ignace-Gaston Pardies’ (1636-73) beautifully engraved folio celestial atlas, here in a deluxe copy with its 6 double-page charts in fine contemporary hand-color and its some 1500 stars, nebulae and comets individually illuminated in gold. Examples of the atlas typically consist of only..... More

Rare first and sole edition of this description of a sundial of the author's invention, which functioned as an astronomical perpetual calendar: determining for any day of the year the sun's rising, noon, setting, and mid-night, place of the sun in the Zodiac, etc. The work explains how to take..... More

Rare first edition of Hevelius’ star atlas, along with the Introduction (Prodromus) and the catalogue of stars, together as issued: a fundamental text in the history of astronomy and a spectacular illustrated book. The Firmamentum Sobiescianum is considered the most detailed and influential celestial atlas of its time, both in..... More