Beschreibung:

PIAZZI, Giuseppe (1746-1826)]. Della scoperta del nuovo pianeta Cerere Ferdinandea . Palermo: stamperia Reale, 1802.
PIAZZI, Giuseppe (1746-1826)]. Della scoperta del nuovo pianeta Cerere Ferdinandea . Palermo: stamperia Reale, 1802. 4° (210 x 149mm). Large engraved title vignette by di Bella after Lo Guasto, and another engraving of the observatory at Palermo. (First five leaves with worming to lower margin reaching bottom line of text on some pages, worm tracks filled in, title spotted and with fragment torn from foremargin, further light spotting.) Modern blue marbled boards, uncut (lightly rubbed). Provenance : Giannalisa Feltrinelli (bookplate; The Feltrinelli Library Part VI, Christie’s South Kensington, 2 June 1998, lot 1497). SCARCE FIRST EDITION confirming Piazzi’s discovery of the dwarf planet Ceres, named after the patron goddess of Sicily. While searching a region in Taurus on the night of 1 January 1801, hoping to see a star of the seventh magnitude listed in Lacaille's catalogue, he had ‘noticed the passage of a somewhat fainter body that Lacaille had not listed. Piazzi continued to observe the new body on the following evenings and ascertained from its movement that it must be a planet or comet ... He published his observations in 1801 as Risultati delle osservazioni della nuova stella scoperta il 1° gennaio 1801 nell'osservatorio di Palermo ’ (Palermo was then the southernmost observatory, equipped with the best instruments from England). Once it became fully evident that this new body was a planet and not a star, the present tract was published. It involved Piazzi in controversy with Herschel who proposed that Ceres and Pallas be called ‘asteroids’ rather than planets (see DSB X, pp.591-592).