During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a number of astronomers, including Andreas Cellanius, Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr, James Ferguson, Galileo Galilei, Christiaan Huygens, Philip van Lansberge, Otto von Guericke and William Whiston promoted new views of the Copernican Solar System by producing a succession of maps and drawings. Although primarily didactic, many of these were distinguished by their charm and beauty, and a selection of them is presented on the front cover of this issue of JAHH. All were taken from the paper by Pedro Raposo and Christopher Graney, “A true and exact description of the Sun’s place”: constructing the image of the Solar System in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries”, which is on pages 329–350 in this issue of JAHH. ‘