These fantastic hand coloured wood-cuts are taken from the 16th Century astronomy text Astronomicum Caesareum by Petrus Apian. Taking several years to produce at  his private print shop in Ingolstadt the book is unusual in that it contains twenty one illustrations with moving parts (so called “volvelles“). These are primarily planetary equatoria (paper wheels designed for locating the position of planets in the zodiac). Even in the 16th century it was a great luxury item with a very limited print. Tycho Brahe is recoreded as having paid twenty florins for his copy which equates to approximately $3000 today!

Best appreciated at maxiumum size (click to go to the full size on Flickr)

A PDF of this book containing 37 full colour plates (along with many other rare astronomical texts from the 15th to the 18th century) can be obtained for free from the web page of the Digital Rare Book Collection at the Vienna University Observatory located at http://www.univie.ac.at/hwastro/.

You can also view the full set of illustrations from Astronomicum Caesareum in my Flickr set HERE.