Johann Bayer

See also: Bayer

Johann Bayer (1572, Rain, Donau-Laugh - March 7th 1625, Augsburg) was a German magistrate impassioned Astronomie.

Its great work was the astronomical Atlas Uranometria , published with Augsburg in 1603, and which was the first atlas entirely covering the celestial Sphère. It contained 51 sidereal charts: for each of the 48 Constellation S of Ptolémée, for the skies more in the south and which were not known by Ptolémée, and two planispheres. It was reproduced in 1627 under the title of Coelum stellarum christianum .

For his charts of the constellations, Bayer used the most modern observations of his time, those of the large Danish astronomer Tycho Brahé.

For its southern sky chart, it referred to the statements of two Dutch navigators, Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman.

Uranometria introduced the designations of Bayer, which are still employed today, like some of the modern constellations.

Nomenclature suggested by Bayer allowed to simplify the classification of stars largely. He indeed imagined to indicate stars of the same constellation by using the letters of the alphabet Greek: alpha for the most luminous star, beta for the more brilliant second, and so on. If a constellation comprised more than 24 stars (the Greek number of the letters of the alphabet), it used then the Latin alphabet.

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