Lunar map

POSNER KAROLY LAJOS (1822-1887) (editor)

Published in Poland, 1893.

Good condition.

There are three main accidents of lunar geography that are reflected in the cartographies. The craters of meteoric origin, the mountain ranges and the seas that are extensive dark and basaltic plains.

The nomenclature of these accidents was very varied in the first decades of lunar exploration, but the nomenclature of the Jesuit Giovanni Riccioli ended up being imposed in 1651 in his work Almagestum Novum where he curiously defended the theories of geocentrism. Riccioli assigned to the seas the names of the effects that the Moon produced on the Earth: thus we have the Mare Crisium (crisis), Serenitatis (tranquility), Imbrium (of the rains), Fecunditatis (fertility), Frigoris (cold).

Names from terrestrial geographical features such as the Apennines, the Alps and the Carpathians were used for the mountain ranges. And finally the craters for which names of scientists, philosophers and astronomers such as Aristotle, Archimedes, Plato, Aristarchus, but also Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho or Kepler were used.

Karoly Lajos Posner was one of the great Hungarian editors of the mid-XIX century, noted for his excellent lithographic works and numerous cartographies that earned him numerous distinctions.