Huygens, Christiaan | Systema saturnium …, The Hague, 1659, first edition of the first full announcement of the discovery of the ring and satellite of Saturn

Huygens, Christiaan

Systema saturnium; sive, De causis mirandorum Saturni phaenomenon, et comite eius planeta novo. The Hague: Adrian Vlacq, 1659

First edition of the first full announcement of Huygens's discovery of the ring and satellite of Saturn.

In 1655 Huygens discovered, with the help of the telescope he built with his brother, a new satellite of Saturn, which was later named Titan. Huygens also proposed that the supposed "arms" of Saturn were in fact a single ring; however, this theory was not widely accepted at first and Eustachio Divini's tract Brevis annotatio in Systema Saturnium Christiani Hugenii (first published in Rome in 1660) attacked Huygens's Copernican stance. Huygens replied quickly in print, denouncing the argument that Saturn was surrounded by four satellites instead of Huygens's ring. The ring theory was for the most part accepted by 1670.

4to (203 x 155 mm). Later state, with the plate on p. 18 printed correctly, one engraved folding plate, 11 in-text engravings, 8 woodcut text diagrams; title-page lightly soiled, one engraving shaved, upper margin of first quire dampstained, some light offsetting from plates, soiling, slight paper flaw to lower corner of two leaves. Eighteenth-century paneled calf; neatly rebacked and recornered.

REFERENCES

Buffalo/Sparrow 110; Honeyman sale 4:1728; Dibner, Heralds 9; STCN 852387423; USTC 1844971

PROVENANCE

Robert S. Dunham (acquired from R. King in June 1947, pencil acquisition note to front pastedown; Sotheby's New York, 11 December 1993, lot 704)