Astronomical Images : The true thickness of the celestial orbs and spaces

Johannes Kepler

Astronomical Images

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Plates [<i>Tabellae</i>] 1, 2, 4 and 5 of Johannes Kepler's <i>Mysterium cosmographicum</i> were, as Gerd Grasshoff has shown, designed by Kepler's collaborator in production of the work, his former teacher at Tuebingen Michael Maestlin, who had insisted on the need for diagrams to convey the central arguments of the work. They represent the specificities of the Copernican planetary models as calculated by Maestlin on the basis of Reinhold's <i>Prutenic Tables</i>. Plate 4, seen here, is a cross-section in the plane of the ecliptic, which together with Plate 5 shows the thicknesses of the planetary orbs required to accommodate their eccentric paths.</p>