Johann Bayer (1572 – 7 March 1625) was a German lawyer and uranographer (celestial cartographer). He was born in

Rain, Lower Bavaria Rain is a municipality in the district of Straubing-Bogen in Bavaria, Germany. Former head of state of Hungary, Archduke Joseph August of Austria Archduke Joseph August Viktor Klemens Maria of Austria, Prince of Hungary and Bohemia (9 Augus ...

, in 1572. At twenty, in 1592 he began his study of philosophy and law at the

University of Ingolstadt The University of Ingolstadt was founded in 1472 by Louis the Rich, the Duke of Bavaria at the time, and its first Chancellor was the Bishop of Eichstätt. It consisted of five faculties: humanities, sciences, theology, law, and medicine, all o ...

, after which he moved to

Augsburg Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the ...

to begin work as a lawyer, becoming legal adviser to the city council in 1612. Bayer had several interests outside his work, including archaeology and mathematics. However, he is primarily known for his work in astronomy; particularly for his work on determining the positions of objects on the celestial sphere. He remained unmarried and died in 1625. Bayer's

star atlas Celestial cartography, uranography, astrography or star cartography is the aspect of astronomy and branch of cartography concerned with mapping stars, galaxies, and other astronomical objects on the celestial sphere. Measuring the position ...

'' Uranometria Omnium Asterismorum'' (" Uranometry of all the asterisms") was first published in 1603 in Augsburg and dedicated to two prominent local citizens. This was the first

atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geograp ...

to cover the entire celestial sphere. It was based upon the work of

Tycho Brahe Tycho Brahe ( ; born Tyge Ottesen Brahe; generally called Tycho (14 December 154624 October 1601) was a Danish astronomer, known for his comprehensive astronomical observations, generally considered to be the most accurate of his time. He was ...

and may have borrowed from

Alessandro Piccolomini Alessandro Piccolomini (13 June 1508 – 12 March 1579) was an Italian humanist, astronomer and philosopher from Siena, who promoted the popularization in the vernacular of Latin and Greek scientific and philosophical treatises. His early works ...

's 1540 star atlas, ''De le stelle fisse'' ("Of the fixed stars"), although Bayer included an additional 1,000 stars. The ''Uranometria'' introduced a new system of star designation which has become known as the Bayer designation. Bayer's atlas included twelve new constellations invented a few years earlier to fill in the far south of the night sky, which was unknown to ancient Greece and Rome. The crater Bayer on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

is named after him.

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Full digital facsimile

Linda Hall Library The Linda Hall Library is a privately endowed American library of science, engineering and technology located in Kansas City, Missouri, sitting "majestically on a urban arboretum." It is the "largest independently funded public library of scien ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bayer, Johann 1572 births 1625 deaths People from Rain, Swabia 17th-century German astronomers 16th-century German astronomers

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