Johannes Hevelius or Johann Hewelke or Johannes Hewel (in German) or Jan Heweliusz (in Polish), born with Gdansk the January 28th 1611 and dead the January 28th 1687 was a Astronome called the founder of lunar topography .

Born in a rich person family from brewers and traders, he studied the Jurisprudence with Leyde before furrowing the England and the France. Of return in its birthplace in 1634, he was brewer and city council man. One year after he married Katharina Rebeschkea, the girl of a trader. Although it was implied all its life in municipal businesses of its city, it was interested in the Astronomie. After the death of Katharina he married Elisabeth Koopman who was sixteen years old.

The king Jean II of Poland and the queen Marie-Louise de Gonzague visited the January 29th 1660 the observatory which it had built in his residence in 1641 with remarkable equipment which ends up including a telescope without tube of one focal length 45 meters builds by its care.

Hevelius made observations of sunspots of 1642 with 1645. It devoted four years to draw up a chart of lunar surface. He discovered the Libration in longitude of the the Moon and published his results in 1647 in the Selenographia which make him of him the founder of lunar topography. He discovered four Comet S in 1652, 1661, 1672 and 1677 (that of 1661 is probably the same one as the comet 153P/Ikeya-Zhang) and suggested the revolution of such bodies in parabolic trajectories around the Sun.

The September 26th 1679, a fire destroys the majority of its observatory, its instruments and its books. It described this catastrophe in 1685 in the foreword of sound Annus climactericus . Although it repaired the damage sufficiently quickly to enable him to observe large comet of December 1680, its health was sufficiently affected by this shock so that it ends up dying about it.

One counts among his work:

• Historiola Mirae (1662), in which it gave the name of “Reflected” (“the marvellous one”) with periodic variable star Omicron Ceti.
• Prodromus cometicus (1665)
• Cometographia (1668)
• Machina coelestis (first part, 1673), containing a description of its instruments; the second part (1679) is extremely rare, the edition having burned almost entirely in the fire of 1679.
• the observations made by Hevelius on variable star, called by him Mira, are include in the Annus climactericus .

• Its catalog of stars of 1564 was published in posthumous title in 1690 in the Prodromus astronomiae . The value was largely faded by its preference, contrary to Auzout for the old sights with the telescopic sights on quadrants. It had a sour polemic on this subject with Robert Hooke.
• In a atlas of 56 sheets corresponding to its catalog, heading Firmamentum Sobiescianum (1690), it traced seven new constellations, always of use.

Hevelius made print with high expenses this extremely expensive book in its residence. Not only, it conceived itself of it the plates, but also engraved much of it.

March 30th 1664 -->