He had introduced a number of new constellations - one named for his sextant which had been destroyed in an observatory fire, and one for the King of Poland. Seven of these are still current in contemporary atlases.
Hevelius came from a long established family of brewers, appropriate for an astronomer as the profession is a boozy one, and had in fact joined the Brewer's Guild and become its leader, or Ratbhäg, in 1643.
In 1651 he became a Ratshërr, or Town Councillor and later became Mayor.
Having developed an interest in astronomy he constructed an observatory in 1641 on the connected roofs of his three adjacent houses, and this observatory was visited by the Queen, and some years later, in 1678, by King John III Sobieski of Poland.
Like Herschel, Johannes knew you could never go far wrong by sucking up to royalty and named both a constellation and the Firmanentum Sobiescianum after the King.
A fellow of the Royal Society, he was a conservative lad and was slow to add telescopic observing to his routine until leaned on by the young Halley who was a modernist.
Questions have long been raised as to how many of the "new" constellations introduced by Hevelius were his own work and how much had been lifted from earlier works. For example, Sobieski's shield corresponds exactly with an ancient Hebrew constellation, King David's Footstool.
This constellation was first identified by Professor Josephus Herodus in the Jerusalem Codex, discovered amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1948 and dating from the Babylonian Captivity when the tribes of Israel had been removed by the King of Babylon to his capital and subjected to 60 years of educating, civilising and the art of personal hygiene – a quality lacking in itinerant goat herders.
This turned the tribes from being a scruffy collection of ignorant goat herders, into a society fit to take its place amongst the best of the ancient world and introduced them to literature, Chaldean Astronomy and artistic appreciation.
Additionally, the constellation of the Sextant (called the "flatulent camel") appeared on the Cleopatra Sky Chart, inscribed on the walls of the Temple at Dendera to commemorate the Queen's epic journey along the Nile to Elephantine in the course of her attempt to find the source of the Nile.
This inscription showed a number of southern stars not visible from Alexandria and demonstrated the depth of knowledge and interest in science possessed by this famous Queen, who could not only speak seven languages but could also swear fluently in Hebrew, Latin, and Phoenician.
Other parts of the inscription are less scientific and relate to the bas relief of Cleopatra water-skiing along the Nile, a sport she invented to pass the time on the long trip back to Alexandria and a credit to the fitness of the rowers of the Royal Barge.
It had not been realised that Hevelius had access to such ancient texts but as his library and instruments had been lost during his observatory's destruction by fire in 1686, copies may well have been stored there.