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Willem Blaeu
Willem Janszoon Blaeu (; 157121 October 1638), also abbreviated to Willem Jansz. Blaeu, was a Dutch cartographer, atlas maker, and publisher. Along with his son Johannes Blaeu, Willem is considered one of the notable figures of the Netherlandish or Dutch school of cartography during its golden age in the 16th and 17th centuries. Biography Blaeu was born at Uitgeest or Alkmaar. As the son of a well-to-do herring salesman, he was destined to succeed his father in the trade, but his interests lay more in mathematics and astronomy. Between 1594 and 1596, as a student of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, he qualified as an instrument and globe maker. During this time in 1596, his son Joan Blaeu was born and he would also become a well established cartographer. Later in 1600 Willem discovered the second ever variable star, now known as P Cygni. Once he returned to Holland, he made country maps and world globes, and as he possessed his own printing works, he was able to regula ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Willem Janszoon
Willem Janszoon (; ) was a Dutch navigator and colonial governor. He served in the Dutch East Indies in the periods 1603–1611 and 1612–1616, including as governor of Fort Henricus on the island of Solor. During his voyage of 1605–1606, Janszoon and his crew became the first Europeans known to have seen and landed on the coast of Australia. His name is sometimes abbreviated to Willem Jansz, as was customary at his time, but "always pronounced in full and generally still is in the Netherlands where this bit of common knowledge is taught at school." However, the abbreviation ''Jansz'' is not the same as the now more predominant unabbreviated but identical ''Jansz'' that is a petrified form of ''Janszoon''. Early life Willem Janszoon (Willem Jansz) was born around 1570 as the son of Jan (, but nothing more is known of his early life or of his parents. Janszoon is first recorded as having entered into the service of the , one of the predecessors of the Dutch East India Co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest include planets, natural satellite, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxy, galaxies, meteoroids, asteroids, and comets. Relevant phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, quasars, blazars, pulsars, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, astronomy studies everything that originates beyond atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere. Cosmology is a branch of astronomy that studies the universe as a whole. Astronomy is one of the oldest natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history made methodical observations of the night sky. These include the Egyptian astronomy, Egyptians, Babylonian astronomy, Babylonians, Greek astronomy, Greeks, Indian astronomy, Indians, Chinese astronomy, Chinese, Maya civilization, M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metius
Adriaan Adriaanszoon, called Metius, (9 December 1571 – 6 September 1635), was a Dutch geometer and astronomer born in Alkmaar. The name "Metius" comes from the Dutch word ''meten'' ("measuring"), and therefore means something like "measurer" or "surveyor." Father and brother Adriaan Metius was born in Alkmaar, North Holland. His father, Adriaan Anthonisz, was a mathematician, land-surveyor, cartographer, and military engineer who from 1582 served also as burgomaster of Alkmaar. Metius' brother, Jacob Metius, worked as an instrument-maker and a specialist in grinding lenses. Also born in Alkmaar, Jacob died between 1624 and 1631. Little is known of him besides the fact that, in October 1608, the States General discussed his patent application for an optical telescope of his own invention described as a device for "seeing faraway things as though nearby", consisting of a convex and concave lens in a tube, and the combination magnified three or four times. Education Adriaan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
René Descartes
René Descartes ( , ; ; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and Modern science, science. Mathematics was paramount to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry. Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic, initially serving the Dutch States Army, and later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age. Although he served a Dutch Reformed Church, Protestant state and was later counted as a Deism, deist by critics, Descartes was Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholic. Many elements of Descartes's philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism, the Neostoicism, revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or in earlier philosophers like Augustine of Hippo, Augustine. In his natural philosophy, he differed from the Scholasticism, schools on two major point ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Willebrord Snell
Willebrord Snellius (born Willebrord Snel van Royen) (13 June 158030 October 1626) was a Dutch astronomer and mathematician, commonly known as Snell. His name is usually associated with the law of refraction of light known as Snell's law. The lunar crater Snellius is named after Willebrord Snellius. The Royal Netherlands Navy has named three survey ships after Snellius, including a currently-serving vessel. Biography Willebrord Snellius was born in Leiden, Netherlands. In 1613 he succeeded his father, Rudolph Snel van Royen (1546–1613) as professor of mathematics at the University of Leiden. Surveying In 1615, Snellius, after the work of Eratosthenes in Ptolemaic Egypt in the 3rd century BC, probably was the first to use triangulation to do a large-scale arc measurement for determining the circumference of the earth. He was helped in his measurements by two of his students, the Austrian barons Erasmus and Casparus Sterrenberg. In several cities he also received ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dutch East India Company
The United East India Company ( ; VOC ), commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, was a chartered company, chartered trading company and one of the first joint-stock companies in the world. Established on 20 March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating Voorcompagnie, existing companies, it was granted a 21-year monopoly to carry out trade activities in Asia. Shares in the company could be purchased by any citizen of the Dutch Republic and subsequently bought and sold in open-air secondary markets (one of which became the Amsterdam Stock Exchange). The company possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike Coinage of the Dutch East India Company, its own coins, and establish colonies. Also, because it traded across multiple colonies and countries from both the East and the West, the VOC is sometimes considered to have been the world's first multinational corporation. St ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlas Novus
An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a continent or region of Earth. Advances in astronomy have also resulted in atlases of the celestial sphere or of other planets. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today, many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geographical features and political boundaries, many atlases often feature geopolitical, social, religious, and economic statistics. They also have information about the map and places in it. Etymology The use of the word "atlas" in a geographical context dates from 1595 when the German-Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator published ("Atlas or cosmographical meditations upon the creation of the universe and the universe as created"). This title provides Mercator's definition of the word as a description of the creation and form of the whole universe, not simply as a collection of maps. The volume that was published posthumously one year af ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holland
Holland is a geographical regionG. Geerts & H. Heestermans, 1981, ''Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal. Deel I'', Van Dale Lexicografie, Utrecht, p 1105 and former provinces of the Netherlands, province on the western coast of the Netherlands. From the 10th to the 16th century, Holland proper was a unified political region within the Holy Roman Empire as a county ruled by the counts of Holland. By the 17th century, the province of Holland had risen to become a maritime and economic power, dominating the other provinces of the newly independent Dutch Republic. The area of the former County of Holland roughly coincides with the two current Provinces of the Netherlands, Dutch provinces of North Holland and South Holland into which it was divided, and which together include the Netherlands' three largest cities: the Capital of the Netherlands, capital city (Amsterdam), the home of Port of Rotterdam, Europe's largest port (Rotterdam), and the seat of government (The Hague). Hollan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
P Cygni
P Cygni (34 Cygni) is a variable star in the constellation Cygnus. The designation "P" was originally assigned by Johann Bayer in '' Uranometria'' as a nova. Located about 5,300 light-years (1,560 parsecs) from Earth, it is a hypergiant luminous blue variable (LBV) star of spectral type B1-2 Ia-0ep that is one of the most luminous stars in the Milky Way. Visibility The star is located about 5,000 to 6,000 light-years (1,500–1,800 parsecs) from Earth. Despite this vast distance, it is visible to the naked eye in suitable dark sky locations. It was unknown until the end of the 16th century, when it suddenly brightened to 3rd magnitude. It was first observed on 18 August (Gregorian) 1600 by Willem Janszoon Blaeu, a Dutch astronomer, mathematician and globe-maker. Bayer's atlas of 1603 assigned it the miscellaneous label P and the name has stuck ever since. After six years the star faded slowly, dropping below naked-eye visibility in 1626. It brightened again in 1655, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Variable Star
A variable star is a star whose brightness as seen from Earth (its apparent magnitude) changes systematically with time. This variation may be caused by a change in emitted light or by something partly blocking the light, so variable stars are classified as either: * ''Intrinsic variables'', whose luminosity actually changes periodically; for example, because the star swells and shrinks. * ''Extrinsic variables'', whose apparent changes in brightness are due to changes in the amount of their light that can reach Earth; for example, because the star has an orbiting companion that sometimes eclipses it. Many, possibly most, stars exhibit at least some oscillation in luminosity: the energy output of the Sun, for example, varies by about 0.1% over an 11-year solar cycle. Discovery An ancient Egyptian calendar of lucky and unlucky days composed some 3,200 years ago may be the oldest preserved historical document of the discovery of a variable star, the eclipsing binary Algol. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joan Blaeu
Joan Blaeu (; 23 September 1596 – 21 December 1673), also called Johannes Blaeu, was a Dutch cartographer and the official cartographer of the Dutch East India Company. Blaeu is most notable for his map published in 1648, which was the first map to incorporate the heliocentric theory into a map of the world and was the first map that incorporated the discoveries of Abel Tasman. Blaeu renamed what is now New Zealand as ''Nieuw Zeeland'' after the Dutch province of Zeeland; the anglicized version of the name is still in use today. Biography Early life Blau was born in Alkmaar, the son of cartographer Willem Blaeu. In 1620, Blaeu became a doctor of law but he joined in the work of his father. In 1635, they published the '' Atlas Novus'' (full title: ''Theatrum orbis terrarum, sive, Atlas novus'') in two volumes. Joan and his brother Cornelius took over the studio after their father died in 1638. Blaeu succeeded his father as the official cartographer of the Dutch East India ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Globe
A globe is a spherical Earth, spherical Model#Physical model, model of Earth, of some other astronomical object, celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but, unlike maps, they do not distort the surface that they portray except to scale it down. A model globe of Earth is called a terrestrial globe. A model globe of the celestial sphere is called a ''celestial globe''. A globe shows details of its subject. A terrestrial globe shows landmasses and body of water, water bodies. It might show nations and major cities and the network of geographic coordinate system, latitude and longitude lines. Some have raised relief to show mountains and other large landforms. A celestial globe shows notable stars, and may also show positions of other prominent astronomical objects. Typically, it will also divide the celestial sphere into constellations. The word ''globe'' comes from the Latin word ''globus'', meaning "sphere". Globes have a long history. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
