This Old Map: The Moon, 1647

Every earthling is a student of the moon. Who hasn’t gazed at its brilliant face, squinted to make out its canyons and craters, and wondered about its dark side? But there’s one person officially credited with founding selenography, the study of the moon’s physical features. That would be Johannes Hevelius, whose most famous lunar map influences astronomy, cartography, and navigation to this day.

Born in Poland in 1611, Hevelius spent his adolescence under the tutelage of the famed German astronomer, mathematician, and polymath Peter Krüger. Though Hevelius found success as a brewer by early adulthood, his tutor’s death in 1639 compelled him to commit his life’s work to studying the cosmos, especially the moon. The timing was good, for telescope technology was improving; Galileo had pointed the very first one into the night sky just 30 years prior.