Hevelius’ drawing of the full Moon

Courtesy the United States Naval Observatory

Hevelius made extraordinarily detailed drawings of the Moon. This drawing of the full Moon from his 1647 atlas of the Moon, the Selenographia, shows craters, slopes, and plains. Hevelius named 286 craters, mountains, and “seas,” but his names were long and cumbersome, and only 10 are still used today.