BAYER, (Jmix) in biography, a Ger man lawyer and astronomer of the latter part of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century, but in what particular y ear or place he was born is not certainly known: however, his name will be ever memora ble in the annals of astronomy, on ac count of that great and excellent work which he first published in the year 1603, under the title of " Uranometria," being a complete celestial atlas, or large folio charts of all the constellations, with a no menclature collected from all the tables of astronomy, ancient and modern, with the useful invention of denoting the stars in every constellation by the letters of the Greek alphabet, in their order, and according to the order of magnitude of the stars in each constellation. By means of these marks the stars of the heavens may, with as great facility be distinguished and referred to, as the several places of the earth are by means of geographical tables ; and as a proof of the usefulness of this method, our celestial globes and atlasses have ever since retained it ; and hence it is become of general use through all the literary world ; astronomers, in speaking of any star in the constellation, denoting it by saying it is marked by Bayer, a, or A, or I., &c.
Bayer lived many years after the first publication of this work, which he greatly improved and augmented by his constant attention to the study of the stars. At length, in the year 1627, it was republish ed under a new title, viz. " Cerium Stella tom Christianum, that is, the Christian Stellated Heaven, or the Starry Heavens forin this work the then names and characters, or figures of the constellations, were rejected, and others, taken from the scriptures, were inserted in their stead, to circumscribe the respective constellations. But this was considered too great an innovation, and we find in the latter editions of the work that the ancient figures and names were restored.