BAYER, JOHN, a German astronomer and law yer, who flourished about the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries, and who is celebra ted as the author of the first celestial atlas of any importance, and of a valuable improvement in the pomcnelature of the stars, which has been adopted by the astronomers of all nations. This improve ment, which consisted in denoting the stars of each constellation by the letters of the Greek alphabet, was published in 1603, in his Uranornetria, site omniurn asierismorum sehemata quinquaainta et linum in t tolidem labidis nova method° delineate:. August. Vindelie. Fol. 1603. The second edition of this work was published at Ulm in 1648 ; the third in 1654 ; and the fourth in 1661.
The atlas of Bayer was published in a new form in 1627, under the title of Cerium Stellatum Christian. um, by Julius Schiller of Augsburg, who removed the names of the constellation that were drawn from the fables of the Greeks, with the pious intention of promoting to that high distinction, the figures and the names of the sacred scriptures. He placed the
twelve apostles in the twelve signs of the zodiac, the New Testament in the northern hemisphere, and the Old Testament in the southern hemisphere.
This new scheme, however, did not succeed ac. cording to the pious wishes of its author, and the heathen names of the constellations were accordingly retained in all the subsequent editions of the Urano metria.
About thirty-five years afterwards, in the year 1662, Philip Ccesius, a Dutchman, proposed a si milar innovation. He made the constellation of the Ram, that which Abraham sacrificed for his son Isaac. He made the Bull, that which was sacrificed by Adam : The Twins were Jacob and Esau, the children of Rebecca, &e. See ASTRONOMY, part i. book iii. chap. i. See also Weidler's Historia As tronomice, pp. 458, 506. Montucla's Ilist. des Ma- theniag. torn. ii. p. 251. Bailly, Hist. de l'Astron. ilIoderne, torn. ii. p. 150. (o)