Fig. 137. Portrait of Johann Hevelius (Hevel).
Fig. 138. Constellation Ursa Major.
Fig. 139. Constellation of Orion by Hevelius.
In the geographical records as they appear on the several terrestrial globe maps, it is to be admitted that the authors, with rare exceptions, undertook to set down what they thought to be fact, shall we say the real tangible geographical fact or facts. The maker of the star map, on the contrary, clearly gave his imagination play, not in his attempt to mark in the proper location the several stars as they came to be known and catalogued, but in the draughting of the figures of the several constellations. The imaginative figures of the ancients, of Eudoxus, of Aratus, of Ptolemy and others survived throughout the period we have had under consideration, and to the forty-eight constellations of Ptolemy others from time to time were added until more than one hundred have been named and figured. In general the several constellations, as the various astronomers and makers of star maps have conceived them, may be said to be identical, while some of the names which have been proposed have been accepted but for a time only and then rejected. Some of the groups to which names have been given have later been divided, thus giving rise to a new group name and to the draughting of an appropriate figure for this new group.[204]