Beginnings of Indian Astronomy with Reference to a Parallel Development in China
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Gerbert of Aurillac: Astronomy and Geometry in Tenth Century Europe
October 25, 2018 15:56 WSPC/INSTRUCTION FILE Sigismondi-Gerbert International Journal of Modern Physics: Conference Series c World Scientific Publishing Company GERBERT OF AURILLAC: ASTRONOMY AND GEOMETRY IN TENTH CENTURY EUROPE COSTANTINO SIGISMONDI Sapienza University of Rome, Physics Dept., and Galileo Ferraris Institute P.le Aldo Moro 5 Roma, 00185, Italy. e-mail: [email protected] University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis - Dept. Fizeau (France); IRSOL, Istituto Ricerche Solari di Locarno (Switzerland) Received 6 Feb 2012 Revised Day Month Year Gerbert of Aurillac was the most prominent personality of the tenth century: as- tronomer, organ builder and music theoretician, mathematician, philosopher, and finally pope with the name of Silvester II (999-1003). Gerbert introduced firstly the arabic num- bers in Europe, invented an abacus for speeding the calculations and found a rational approximation for the equilateral triangle area, in the letter to Adelbold here discussed. Gerbert described a semi-sphere to Constantine of Fleury with built-in sighting tubes, used for astronomical observations. The procedure to identify the star nearest to the North celestial pole is very accurate and still in use in the XII century, when Computa- trix was the name of Polaris. For didactical purposes the Polaris would have been precise enough and much less time consuming, but here Gerbert was clearly aligning a precise equatorial mount for a fixed instrument for accurate daytime observations. Through the sighting tubes it was possible to detect equinoxes and solstices by observing the Sun in the corresponding days. The horalogium of Magdeburg was probably a big and fixed- mount nocturlabe, always pointing the star near the celestial pole. -
The Dunhuang Chinese Sky: a Comprehensive Study of the Oldest Known Star Atlas
25/02/09JAHH/v4 1 THE DUNHUANG CHINESE SKY: A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY OF THE OLDEST KNOWN STAR ATLAS JEAN-MARC BONNET-BIDAUD Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique ,Centre de Saclay, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France E-mail: [email protected] FRANÇOISE PRADERIE Observatoire de Paris, 61 Avenue de l’Observatoire, F- 75014 Paris, France E-mail: [email protected] and SUSAN WHITFIELD The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK E-mail: [email protected] Abstract: This paper presents an analysis of the star atlas included in the medieval Chinese manuscript (Or.8210/S.3326), discovered in 1907 by the archaeologist Aurel Stein at the Silk Road town of Dunhuang and now held in the British Library. Although partially studied by a few Chinese scholars, it has never been fully displayed and discussed in the Western world. This set of sky maps (12 hour angle maps in quasi-cylindrical projection and a circumpolar map in azimuthal projection), displaying the full sky visible from the Northern hemisphere, is up to now the oldest complete preserved star atlas from any civilisation. It is also the first known pictorial representation of the quasi-totality of the Chinese constellations. This paper describes the history of the physical object – a roll of thin paper drawn with ink. We analyse the stellar content of each map (1339 stars, 257 asterisms) and the texts associated with the maps. We establish the precision with which the maps are drawn (1.5 to 4° for the brightest stars) and examine the type of projections used. -
The Ancient Mesopotamian Place Name “Meluḫḫa”
THE ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN PLACE NAME “meluḫḫa” Stephan Hillyer Levitt INTRODUCTION The location of the Ancient Mesopotamian place name “Meluḫḫa” has proved to be difficult to determine. Most modern scholars assume it to be the area we associate with Indus Valley Civilization, now including the so-called Kulli culture of mountainous southern Baluchistan. As far as a possible place at which Meluḫḫa might have begun with an approach from the west, Sutkagen-dor in the Dasht valley is probably as good a place as any to suggest (Possehl 1996: 136–138; for map see 134, fig. 1). Leemans argued that Meluḫḫa was an area beyond Magan, and was to be identified with the Sind and coastal regions of Western India, including probably Gujarat. Magan he identified first with southeast Arabia (Oman), but later with both the Arabian and Persian sides of the Gulf of Oman, thus including the southeast coast of Iran, the area now known as Makran (1960a: 9, 162, 164; 1960b: 29; 1968: 219, 224, 226). Hansman identifies Meluḫḫa, on the basis of references to products of Meluḫḫa being brought down from the mountains, as eastern Baluchistan in what is today Pakistan. There are no mountains in the Indus plain that in its southern extent is Sind. Eastern Baluchistan, on the other hand, is marked throughout its southern and central parts by trellised ridges that run parallel to the western edge of the Indus plain (1973: 559–560; see map [=fig. 1] facing 554). Thapar argues that it is unlikely that a single name would refer to the entire area of a civilization as varied and widespread as Indus Valley Civilization. -
Comparative Studies of Ancient Chinese and Greek Astronomy
S-88 – Comparative Studies of Ancient Chinese and Greek Astronomy Ancient & Medieval Science Organizers: 1) Sun Xiaochun, (University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China), [email protected] 2) Efythymios Nicolaidis, (Institute for Neohellenic Research, National Hellenic Research Foundation, Greece), [email protected] Abstract: This symposium is about ancient Greek and Chinese astronomy. The focus will be on the relationship between cosmological ideas, observations, and computational techniques in both traditions. The Greek astronomy arose from Babylonian antecedents and was developed into a tradition characteristic of geometrical models, culminating in Ptolemy’s almagest. Greek philosophical thought about universe, such as by Plato and Aristotle played an important role in the development of astronomy. The Chinese were good observers of celestial phenomena. They independently developed an arithmetical tradition of astronomical computation. Its connection with cosmological ideas was not as tight as that in Greek astronomy. The two traditions had encountered through various ways in pre- modern times, but still maintained their own characters. Speakers in this symposium will use original texts to compare cosmos, measurement, and computation in the two astronomical traditions. Keywords: Ancient Greek and Chinese Astronomy – Comarative Studies – Astronomical instruments – Cosmological ideas – Computational Techniques. Participants: • Fotini Asimakopoulou • GoEun Choi, GoEun Choi, Ki-Won Lee, Byeong-Hee Mihn, Youg Sook Ahn • Kim Sang Hyuk, Kim Sang Hyuk, Mihn Byeong-Hee, Ham Seon Young • Dirk L. Couprie • Wang Guangchao • Eun Hee Lee • Mao Dan, JIANG Xiaoyuan • Christopher Cullen • Xiaochun Sun, Fan Yang • Dmitri Panchenko • Fung Kam Wing • Liu Weimo . -
Naming the Extrasolar Planets
Naming the extrasolar planets W. Lyra Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, K¨onigstuhl 17, 69177, Heidelberg, Germany [email protected] Abstract and OGLE-TR-182 b, which does not help educators convey the message that these planets are quite similar to Jupiter. Extrasolar planets are not named and are referred to only In stark contrast, the sentence“planet Apollo is a gas giant by their assigned scientific designation. The reason given like Jupiter” is heavily - yet invisibly - coated with Coper- by the IAU to not name the planets is that it is consid- nicanism. ered impractical as planets are expected to be common. I One reason given by the IAU for not considering naming advance some reasons as to why this logic is flawed, and sug- the extrasolar planets is that it is a task deemed impractical. gest names for the 403 extrasolar planet candidates known One source is quoted as having said “if planets are found to as of Oct 2009. The names follow a scheme of association occur very frequently in the Universe, a system of individual with the constellation that the host star pertains to, and names for planets might well rapidly be found equally im- therefore are mostly drawn from Roman-Greek mythology. practicable as it is for stars, as planet discoveries progress.” Other mythologies may also be used given that a suitable 1. This leads to a second argument. It is indeed impractical association is established. to name all stars. But some stars are named nonetheless. In fact, all other classes of astronomical bodies are named. -
The Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Language Was Created by Sumerian Turks
Advances in Anthropology, 2017, 7, 197-250 http://www.scirp.org/journal/aa ISSN Online: 2163-9361 ISSN Print: 2163-9353 The Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Language Was Created by Sumerian Turks Metin Gündüz Retired Physician, Diplomate ABEM (American Board of Emergency Medicine), Izmir, Turkey How to cite this paper: Gündüz, M. (2017). Abstract The Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Lan- guage Was Created by Sumerian Turks. The “phonetic sound value of each and every hieroglyphic picture’s expressed Advances in Anthropology, 7, 197-250. and intended meaning as a verb or as a noun by the creators of the ancient https://doi.org/10.4236/aa.2017.74013 Egyptian hieroglyphic picture symbols, ‘exactly matches’, the same meaning” Received: August 2, 2017 as well as the “first letter of the corresponding meaning of the Turkish word’s Accepted: October 13, 2017 first syllable” with the currently spoken dialects of the Turkish language. The Published: October 16, 2017 exact intended sound value as well as the meaning of hieroglyphic pictures as Copyright © 2017 by author and nouns or verbs is individually and clearly expressed in the original hierog- Scientific Research Publishing Inc. lyphic pictures. This includes the 30 hieroglyphic pictures of well-known con- This work is licensed under the Creative sonants as well as some vowel sounds-of the language of the ancient Egyp- Commons Attribution International tians. There is no exception to this rule. Statistical and probabilistic certainty License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ beyond any reasonable doubt proves the Turkish language connection. The Open Access hieroglyphic pictures match with 2 variables (the phonetic value and intended meaning). -
5. the Harappan Script Controversy
5. The Harappan script controversy (Subchapters 5.1-10 are the text of the paper “The Vedic Harappans in writing: Remarks in expectation of a decipherment of the Indus script”, written in late 1999, if I remember correctly. Instead of a postscript, subchapters 5.11-12 summarize a later development in 2003-2004, which throws an entirely different light on the meaning of the Indus script. At the time of editing this collection, I am agnostic on this question.) 5.1. Introduction In the Harappan cities some 4200 seals, many of them duplicates, have been found which carry short inscriptions in an otherwise unknown script. There is not the slightest doubt that this harvest of Harappan writings is but the tip of an iceberg, in this sense that the Harappan culture must have produced much more copious writings, but that most of them disappeared because the writing materials were not resistant to the ravages of time, particularly in the Indian climate. This fatality can still be seen today, when the libraries of many impoverished maharajas' castles are full of manuscripts which are decaying under our very eyes, turning large chunks of India's national memory and heritage into dust. Even of the oldest and most popular texts, the extant manuscripts are seldom older than a few centuries, copies made as the only guarantee to save the texts from the ravages of time which were destroying the earlier copies. It is fair to assume that a text corpus proportionate in size to the enormous extent of the Harappan cultural space, has gone the same way into oblivion. -
BABYLONIAN ASTRONOMY* by W.M. O'neil Though the Modern Western
o BABYLONIAN ASTRONOMY* By W.M. O'Neil Though the modern western world had heard of the Chaldaeans in the Old Testament as soothsayers and astrologers and students of Hellenistic astronomy knew of references to Babylonian observations of eclipses and the like, it is only during the last three quarters of a century but especially during the last half century that modern scholars, following the decipherment of the cuneiform writing on clay tablets, have begun to reveal the richness of Babylonian astronomy. They have, however, a long way yet to go. First, only a fraction of the materials scattered throughout the western world have been studied and interpreted. Fragments of the one tablet are sometimes in different museums; this adds to the difficulty. Second, the materials are usually fragmentary: a few pages torn from a book as it were or even only a few parts of pages (See Plate 1). Otto Neugebauer, perhaps the greatest scholar recently working on Babylonian astronomy, says that it is impossible yet to write an adequate history of Babylonian astronomy and suggests that it may never be possible. How many of the needed basic texts have crumbled into dust after acquisition by small museums unable to give them the needed care? , how many are lying unstudied in the multitudinous collections in the Middle East, in Europe and in North America? or are still lying in the ground?, are questions to which the answers are unknown. Nevertheless, through the work of Neugebauer, his predecessors and younger scholars taking over from him, some outlines of the history and the methods of Babylonian astronomy are becoming clearer. -
The History of the Russian Study of Chinese Astronomy
The history of the Russian study of Chinese astronomy Galina I. Sinkevich Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering [email protected] Abstract. The first relations between Russia and China date to the 13th century. From the 16th c., Russia sent ambassadors to China, who made a description of the country. In the 17th century, a Russian Orthodox mission was founded, led by Father Maxim Tolstoukhov. In the 18th century, the scholars of St.-Petersburg Academy of Sciences took a great interest in the history of Chinese astronomy in letters sent by the Jesuit mission in China. In the 19th c., the Orthodox mission in China began to carry out many functions – trade, diplomacy, science. Petersburg academy sent students to study various aspects of life in China, laying the foundations of Russian sinology. In 1848, St-Petersburg academy founded in Beijing a magnetic and meteorological observatory headed by K. Skachkov. He lived in China for 25 years and made extensive studies of the history of Chinese astronomy. He not only mastered Chinese but also studied many old manuscripts on astronomy. He wrote the research “The fate of astronomy in China” (1874). After Skachkov, Chinese astronomy was studied by G.N. Popov (1920), A.V. Marakuev (1934), and E.I. Beryozkina, who translated “Mathematics in nine books” into Russian (1957) and published a monograph on the history of Chinese mathematics, 1980. In 1995-2003, Beryozkina’s post-graduate student at Moscow University, Fang Yao (Beijing), made a partial translation of the “Treatise on the Gnomon” (Zhoubi Suanjing) into Russian. -
On the Detection of Exoplanets Via Radial Velocity Doppler Spectroscopy
The Downtown Review Volume 1 Issue 1 Article 6 January 2015 On the Detection of Exoplanets via Radial Velocity Doppler Spectroscopy Joseph P. Glaser Cleveland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/tdr Part of the Astrophysics and Astronomy Commons How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! Recommended Citation Glaser, Joseph P.. "On the Detection of Exoplanets via Radial Velocity Doppler Spectroscopy." The Downtown Review. Vol. 1. Iss. 1 (2015) . Available at: https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/tdr/vol1/iss1/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at EngagedScholarship@CSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Downtown Review by an authorized editor of EngagedScholarship@CSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Glaser: Detection of Exoplanets 1 Introduction to Exoplanets For centuries, some of humanity’s greatest minds have pondered over the possibility of other worlds orbiting the uncountable number of stars that exist in the visible universe. The seeds for eventual scientific speculation on the possibility of these "exoplanets" began with the works of a 16th century philosopher, Giordano Bruno. In his modernly celebrated work, On the Infinite Universe & Worlds, Bruno states: "This space we declare to be infinite (...) In it are an infinity of worlds of the same kind as our own." By the time of the European Scientific Revolution, Isaac Newton grew fond of the idea and wrote in his Principia: "If the fixed stars are the centers of similar systems [when compared to the solar system], they will all be constructed according to a similar design and subject to the dominion of One." Due to limitations on observational equipment, the field of exoplanetary systems existed primarily in theory until the late 1980s. -
Searching for Dark Matter Annihilation in Recently Discovered Milky Way Satellites with Fermi-Lat A
The Astrophysical Journal, 834:110 (15pp), 2017 January 10 doi:10.3847/1538-4357/834/2/110 © 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. SEARCHING FOR DARK MATTER ANNIHILATION IN RECENTLY DISCOVERED MILKY WAY SATELLITES WITH FERMI-LAT A. Albert1, B. Anderson2,3, K. Bechtol4, A. Drlica-Wagner5, M. Meyer2,3, M. Sánchez-Conde2,3, L. Strigari6, M. Wood1, T. M. C. Abbott7, F. B. Abdalla8,9, A. Benoit-Lévy10,8,11, G. M. Bernstein12, R. A. Bernstein13, E. Bertin10,11, D. Brooks8, D. L. Burke14,15, A. Carnero Rosell16,17, M. Carrasco Kind18,19, J. Carretero20,21, M. Crocce20, C. E. Cunha14,C.B.D’Andrea22,23, L. N. da Costa16,17, S. Desai24,25, H. T. Diehl5, J. P. Dietrich24,25, P. Doel8, T. F. Eifler12,26, A. E. Evrard27,28, A. Fausti Neto16, D. A. Finley5, B. Flaugher5, P. Fosalba20, J. Frieman5,29, D. W. Gerdes28, D. A. Goldstein30,31, D. Gruen14,15, R. A. Gruendl18,19, K. Honscheid32,33, D. J. James7, S. Kent5, K. Kuehn34, N. Kuropatkin5, O. Lahav8,T.S.Li6, M. A. G. Maia16,17, M. March12, J. L. Marshall6, P. Martini32,35, C. J. Miller27,28, R. Miquel21,36, E. Neilsen5, B. Nord5, R. Ogando16,17, A. A. Plazas26, K. Reil15, A. K. Romer37, E. S. Rykoff14,15, E. Sanchez38, B. Santiago16,39, M. Schubnell28, I. Sevilla-Noarbe18,38, R. C. Smith7, M. Soares-Santos5, F. Sobreira16, E. Suchyta12, M. E. C. Swanson19, G. Tarle28, V. Vikram40, A. R. Walker7, and R. H. Wechsler14,15,41 (The Fermi-LAT and DES Collaborations) 1 Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA; [email protected], [email protected] 2 Department of Physics, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden; [email protected] 3 The Oskar Klein Centre for Cosmoparticle Physics, AlbaNova, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden 4 Dept. -
The Roots of Astronomy
The Roots of Astronomy • Already in the stone and bronze ages, human cultures realized the cyclic nature of motions in the sky. • Monuments dating back to ~ 3000 B.C. show alignments with astronomical significance. • Those monuments were probably used as calendars or even to predict eclipses. Stonehenge • Constructed: 3000 – 1800 B.C. Summer solstice Heelstone • Alignments with locations of sunset, sunrise, moonset and moonrise at summer and winter solstices • Probably used as calendar. Other Examples All Over the World Big Horn Medicine Wheel (Wyoming) Other Examples All Over the World (2) Caracol (Maya culture, approx. A.D. 1000) Ancient Greek Astronomers (1) • Unfortunately, there are no written documents about the significance of stone and bronze age monuments. • First preserved written documents about ancient astronomy are from ancient Greek philosophy. • Greeks tried to understand the motions of the sky and describe them in terms of mathematical (not physical!) models. Ancient Greek Astronomers (2) Models were generally wrong because they were based on wrong “first principles”, believed to be “obvious” and not questioned: 1. Geocentric Universe: Earth at the Center of the Universe. 2. “Perfect Heavens”: Motions of all celestial bodies described by motions involving objects of “perfect” shape, i.e., spheres or circles. Ancient Greek Astronomers (3) • Eudoxus (409 – 356 B.C.): Model of 27 nested spheres • Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.), major authority of philosophy until the late middle ages: Universe can be divided in 2 parts: 1. Imperfect,