Abstract
THE SO-CALLED NOVA OF 1600.—Referring to a note which recently appeared in this column on “Janson's Star of 1600,” Prof, van de Sande Bakhuysen, Director of the Observatory of Leyden, writes us that “Janson or Gulielmus Jansonius is Willem Jansz Blaeu, who is well known as the maker of globes, which are now very rare, and as editor of a treatise on the use of globes, of different treatises on navigation, and of a great number of charts and different atlases. From 1598 till his death in 1638 he lived in Amsterdam. Janson signifies that he was the son of Jan (John), but his family name was Blaeu.” This explanation will be acceptable to those who may have been perhaps somewhat in doubt as to the correct form of identifying the discoverer of the variable star of 1600; Kepler styled him Jansonius, without reference to what Prof. Bakhuysen states to have been his surname: and he is frequently called Jansen. Lalande refers to the globes constructed by Blaeu as the best of the period, and the fact of his remarking the star in question, of which there is no previous mention, proves that he was a careful observer of the heavens. In the Bibliographie Astronomique we find an astronomical work printed in 1625, attributed to him as Willem Jansz Blauw.
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Our Astronomical Column . Nature 23, 371–372 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/023371a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/023371a0