Echoes from the Vault

As 2013 promises to be an interesting year astronomically and we take to gazing at the stars again, I thought it would be good to turn our focus for this week’s blog to the heavens as well. I began my search for the subject of this week’s post by looking at the late 17^th century list of books bought by James Gregory for the establishment of an observatory here at St Andrews. Gregory is an important figure in the development of astronomy and our 1687 catalogue lists the titles of books that he thought important to have on-hand for astronomical observations and the construction of astronomical instruments. Many of these books are still in our 17^th century collections, and as I browsed these one author’s work particularly stuck out as beautiful and inspirational.

We have in our collections two very beautiful volumes by Johannes Hevelius, an…

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