Used with
permission of Maiken Naylor, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA,
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/sel/exhibits/stamps
Johann Hevelius (1611-87) was a wealthy brewer in Danzig who dedicated his life and fortune to the study of astronomy. He built enormously long telescopes and other outsize apparatus on the roof of his house (Newton's reflecting telescope had not yet been invented). He mapped and named craters and mountains on the moon and in 1647 published Selenographia, the first illustrated work of astronomy dealing exclusively with the moon. He also published a stellar atlas, Firmamentum Sobiescianum, observed and mapped nebulosities including the Andromeda nebula, and recorded several decades of sunspot observations. These Polish stamps show Hevelius from a portrait in Selenographia superimposed on a chart of constellations, and also with his six foot radius brass sextant on the roof of his house. .