Plancius, a key promoter to the Dutch East Indies expeditions, had instructed Keyser to map the skies in the southern hemisphere, which were largely uncharted at the time.
The surviving crew stayed for several months on the island, to recover and make repairs, at which point Keyser probably made most of his celestial observations.
Trade negotiations went sour, perhaps caused by Portuguese instigators, perhaps by inexperience, and the crew was forced to find drinking water and other supplies on Sumatra across the Sunda Strait.
The majority were named after various animals that 16th century explorers had encountered (e.g. Bird of Paradise, Chameleon, Toucan, Flying Fish).
Johann Bayer included these new southern constellations in his influential 1603 star atlas Uranometria, crediting them to "Petrus Theodori" (Pieter Keyser),[5] but not acknowledging their earlier publication.