Hevelius Johannes

Johannes Hevelius was born in Danzig (now Gdansk) in Poland to a wealthy brewing family. More interested in astronomy than in the family business, he studied at Leiden and then traveled to England and France, meeting important astronomers with whom he later exchanged a very large number of letters. Upon his return, he devoted five years to the family business, then continued by his wife from 1641, while he built on the terrace of his house one of the largest observatories of the time. He observed the Moon, whose libration he discovered, gave the family name to several new constellations, and observed comets that he described in a beautiful book, the Cometographia of 1668. He proposed that comets have a parabolic orbit. His second wife assisted him in his observations, and after his death published the large catalog of stars to which she contributed.