Important and curious work on astronomy

ASTRONOMY. KIRCHER, ATHANASIUS. Itinerarium exstaticum... - Iter extaticum II... Rom (typis Vitalis Mascardi) 1656-57.
4:o. (8), 1-464, (24), (24), 1-237, (13) pp.
Brown contemporary full leather, worn and mended, rebacked with old partly damaged gilt spine mounted, new inner doublures and endpapers, red edges. A few marginal mendings. Some mostly marginal dampstaining, some foxing. Old library stamps on title and about 15 leaves.

FIRST EDITION OF KIRCHER´S ONLY WORK DEVOTED ENTIRELY TO ASTRONOMY. One of Kircher´s "most curious works", a treatise in the form of a narrative with its protagonist caught up in a dream vision, guided through heaven by a spirit named Cosmiel. In the first dialogue, Kircher describes a journey to the moon, found scarred with mountains and craters in opposition to the Aristotelian view. He flies on to Venus, discovers elements and then visits other planets. Kircher rejects the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmologies in favour of the model proposed by Tycho Brahe. The second part of the work takes up the Tychonian and Copernican systems and deals with the creations of the earth. Kircher cites authorities such as Johannes Hevelius, Gottfried Wendelin and Galileo.

Rebacked, partly marginally dampstained, library stamps