Ptolemy, Opera

For this first edition of Ptolemy’s collected works, Johann Honter drew constellation figures after the manner of Albrecht Dürer. The figures appear in contemporary dress rather than in a classical style. Although positioned on a grid, unfortunately the coordinates were misaligned and constellations are shifted by 30°.

Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaios) lived in Alexandria, Egypt, in the second century. Ptolemy’s technical work on astronomy, originally written in Greek, was titled Almagest (”The Greatest”) by its Arabic translators. Ptolemy’s Almagest represents the culmination of ancient Babylonian and Greek mathematical astronomy. It achieved an unparalleled degree of accuracy in quantitative predictions of the positions of the planets.

Additional source available at https://repository.ou.edu/uuid/80af71d1-8942-5381-ac16-8b036e3447e0?sol…;