Johannes Hevelius

Johannes Hevelius (28 January 1611 – 28 January 1687) was a councillor and mayor of Danzig (Gdańsk), then part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. As an astronomer he gained a reputation as "the founder of lunar topography" and described ten new constellations, seven of which are still recognized by astronomers.

Wiki:

English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Hevelius

Polski: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Heweliusz

Deutsch: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Hevelius

Polish astronomer born on 28 January 1611 in Gdansk, Poland.

He studied Law at Leiden, Netherlands, traveled through Europe, and returned to Gdansk where he took his family's brewing business. In 1639, he started to fully devote himself to astronomy, tapping into his family wealth to construct a private observatory. Through his travels, Hevelius came in contact and corresponded with many astronomers and, due to his excellent work, in 1664 Hevelius was inducted into London Royal Society. He was sponsored by Polish King Jan III Sobieski through a generous pension.

In 1647, Hevelius published Selenographia, first lunar atlas. Hevelius led the race to build a super telescope. Hevelius telescope (50x mag) had 150 ft (46 m) focal length. Tube was suspended by ropes and pulleys. The telescope tube was not light-tight – could only be used in total darkness.

Hevelius had exceptionally keen eyesight, to the point of being able to see stars of the seventh magnitude. Following the lead of Tycho Brahe, Hevelius constructed very large measuring instruments, and managed to improve the accuracy of measured naked-eye stellar positions down to 1 minute of arc on a routine basis, in doing so exceeding even Tycho in accuracy.

In 1670s, Hevelius became involved in a heated controversy with John Flamsteed (1646-1719) and later Robert Hooke (1635-1703), who advocated the use of telescope and micrometers for accurate determinations of stellar positions. The debate ended in 1679, when Edmund Halley (1656-1742), commissioned by the Royal Society, visited Hevelius in Gdansk. Halley confirmed to the Royal Society that Hevelius' position determination were as accurate as anything he could achieve with the state-of-the-art micrometric telescope he had taken along from England.

Elisabetha and Hevelius home and observatory were destroyed by fire on 26 September 1679. Hevelius wrote to his patron King Louis XIV of France, explaining what happened that night. The beginning is useful in describing Elisabetha's contributions:

“On the unhappy evening before the fire I felt deeply troubled by unaccustomed fears. To lift my spirits, I persuaded my young wife, the faithful assistant for my nightly observations, to spend the night in our country retreat outside the walls of the city ...”

Hevelius died in Gdansk on January 28, 1687, on his 76th birthday. Elisabetha prepared three of her husband’s unfinished books for publication. The first of the three works, Stellarum Fixarum was published by Elisabetha in 1687. She also published Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia etc. (1690) which contained 56 star charts, and Prodromus Astronomiae (1690) containing a catalogue of 1564 stars. As well as editing these works, much of their contents were due to Elisabetha in the years she worked with Hevelius.