Seventeenth Century Astronomy Illustration

There is nothing on the back, spendi. The absence of any text, also makes it more difficult to determine for what book the illustration was made.

Wand, These People might be able to identify it.

I noticed that many of the three-world systems are displayed in the same layout as yours. Also, the heliocentric model depicts the rays of the sun. These styles may be typical of particular artists of the time. You might try googling for the names of artists who's drawing style seems similar to your diagrams.

Here's another source.

Thanks, rosborne. I will try to contact the people at the links you provided.

Until I get a better camera, this is the best image I can provide:

Sorry--wrong thread.

Full view of the print:

wande, looking at the larger version, I think the typeface is a dead end, unfortunately. It looks to me like whoever cut the plate also free-handed the letters, which makes sense because the entire plate was probably done as one piece, all likely by the same hand, so the picture letters wouldn't have been set in type, and whoever did it just did a sort of a generic interpretation of Roman letters. oh, well....

Thanks, username. I believe the print was made from a single copper plate. The plate was probably entirely engraved by a single artist.

The link that rosborne supplied advertises an illustration that shows 4 planetary system theories. Their print includes a model devised by Descartes. (My print shows Ptolemaic, Copernican, and Tychonic as B, C, and D. Perhaps "A" may have been the model by Descartes.)

Be careful wande. You sniffing gold can cause you to start aligning yourself with the idiotic simplicities your print depicts.

And that would never do from a scientific point of view unless science is dedicated to you getting at the lucre. Obviously.

It's probably a 19th century version of having some science magazines strewn casually on the coffee table.

The Planetary System Model Of Descartes

Look, Descartes even included the Oort Cloud

And Descartes said that animals are machines and Darwinians say man is an animal.

And Micheal Frayn's book The Tin Men has a scientist trying to teach two computers ethics and each one committing suicide to save the other.

I'll refrain from taking it further.

In the nineteenth century, it became popular to sell "leaf books". A few pages from a rare book were sold to collectors who could not afford to buy the entire book. Below is a notorious example:

Pieces of the Berlin wall and turf from Wembley Stadium's pitch being two others.

Relics abound wande.

A noble knuckle-bone of a 600 million year old bat. Princess Di's corsets.

Kepler's Astronomia Nova published in 1609 shows the same three models that are in my print. An interesting coincidence is that the illustration in Kepler's book is also numbered "XXIV".

My print has a completely different style of illustration. However, the fact that they are both labeled "XXIV" makes me wonder if my print came from a later, unauthorized re-publishing of Kepler's book. There was only one official printing of Astronomia Nova. Reportedly, Kepler's book did not sell very well.