Copper engraving, mm 490x580, original hand colour, from “Atlas coelestis”. Good overall condition, with the usual short margins; some browning along the central fold and in the margins, a restored tear at the bottom centre. Important chart of the moon, showing the surface in the two different versions by Johannes Hevelius (Selenographia, 1647) and Giovanni Battista Riccioli. The two spheres provide a comparative analysis of the topographical information and nomenclature of Riccioli and Hevelius. Hevelius also suggested a system of nomenclature based on earthly features and founded the science of selenography (after Selene, the goddess of the Moon). Hevelius’s nomenclature, although used in Protestant countries until the eighteenth century, was replaced by the system published in 1651 by the Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli, who gave the large naked-eye spots the names of seas (Sea of Tranquillity, Sea of Storm, etc.) and the telescopic spots (now called craters) the names of philosophers and astronomers. Giovanni Battista Riccioli first published his map of the moon in Almagestum novum, published in Bologna in 1651. The Riccioli moon map is historically of great importance, as it provides the basis for the system of lunar nomenclature still in use. It is more properly referred to as the Riccioli/Grimaldi map, since the Jesuit optician Francesco Grimaldi was apparently responsible for the map itself, while fellow-Jesuit Riccioli invented the names (and wrote the book in which the map appeared). Whitfield, Mapping of the Heavens, pp. 93, 96-97. Tooley, R.V., Maps and Map-Makers. p. 27. Kanas, Star Maps, pag. 258