seems to have been made by Wolfgang Schuler at Wittenberg, who says that he saw it at six o'clock in the morning on the 6th November.[1] On the 7th at 6 P.M. it was seen by Paul Hainzel,[2] and the same evening by Bernhard Lindauer, minister at Winterthur in Switzerland.[3] Maurolycus, the well-known astronomer at Messina, and David Chytræus at Rostock, saw it on the 8th.[4] Many writers have quoted the words of Cornelius Gemma, stating that the star appeared first on the 9th November, and that it had not been visible on the previous evening in clear weather,[5] but they have overlooked the fact that Gemma, in his book De Naturæ Divinis Characterismis, seu raris & admirandis Spectaculis, Libri ii. (Antwerp, 1575, 2 vols. 8vo), tells quite a different story, viz., that some people had already seen it before the end of October. He does not say when he first saw it himself, but he did not begin to observe its position till the 26th November, as he thought it idle talk when he first heard of a new star.[6] Gemma's
- ↑ Progymn., i. p. 621.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 536.
- ↑ Rudolf Wolf in Astr. Nachr., lxv. p. 63.
- ↑ About the observation of Maurolycus, see Nature, xxxii. p. 162 (June 18, 1885). About Chytræus, see R. Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie, p. 415.
- ↑ "Nona Nouembris, die Dominico vesperi, cum tamen obseruantibus proximum cœli locum die octauo, etiam sereno æthere non apparuerit" (Hagecii Dialexis, p. 137), also in his separate pamphlet, "Stellæ Peregrinæ iam primum exortæ et Coelo constanter hærentis Φαινὀμενον . . . . per D. Cornelium Gemmam." Lovanij, 1573. 13 pp. 4to (fol. A2). There is one reprint (s.a.e.l.) of this, with some omissions, and coupled with a paper by Postellus, and another coupled with a reprint of a paper by Cyprianus Leovitius. Among writers who have quoted Gemma may be mentioned Newton (Principia, iii., ed. Le Seur and Jacquier, p. 670), who thought that Gemma himself had looked at the sky on the 8th without seeing it; but this was a mistake, as we have just shown above.
- ↑ Gemma's book is a very curious one. The first volume is about terrestrial curiosities, Siamese twins, and much queerer beings (well illustrated); vol. ii. is about celestial wonders, comets, &c., chapter iii. being "De prodigioso Phænomeno syderis noui" (pp. 111-155). Page 113: "Sed qui se primos obseruasse voluerunt, nonum diem pro initio tradiderunt: cum tamen interea conuenerim plures, quorum alij diem secundum aut tertium annotarint, plerique vel ante Octobris finem ferant etiain a vulgaribus obseruatum. . . . Primum observationis tempus fuit nobis die Nou. 26."
