Exhibit

Cataloging the Sky

John Flamsteed and the Royal Greenwich Observatory
A slightly cropped scan of an opening with a frontispiece engraving by Vertue after a 1712 portrait on the verso and the title page on the recto.
John Flamsteed (1646–1719). Historia Coelestis. London, 1712. WKR 14.3.4. Bequest of William King Richardson, 1951.
A slightly cropped scan of an opening with a frontispiece engraving by Vertue after a 1712 portrait on the verso and the title page on the recto.

Opens Monday, Jan 12, 2026

Open to the public

Location

Houghton Library Lobby, Floor 1
Houghton Library
Harvard Yard
Cambridge, MA 02138
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In celebration of the Royal Greenwich Observatory’s 350th anniversary, this work on display is one of the few surviving copies of a pirated edition of star charts produced by the observatory’s inaugural Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, without his permission. Outraged, the latter unrelentingly hunted down every copy of the work he could, and ultimately burned some 300 of the 400 printed.

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