The lost star catalog of Hipparchus – regarded as the earliest known attempt to map the entire night sky – may have just been discovered on parchment preserved at St Catherine’s Monastery on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Peter Williams was an acclaimed biblical scholar who noticed something peculiar in the lettering of the Christian manuscript that he was studying at Cambridge University.
Jamie Klair was a student who had found a famous passage from Greek that was frequently attributed to him. Eratosthenes; an astronomer, and the chief librarian at Library of AlexandriaOne of the most distinguished places of learning in ancient history.
Multispectral imaging revealed that nine folios contained pages with hints of text written over. It wasn’t an unusual finding in itself – parchment was a valuable commodity in centuries gone, so it wasn’t uncommon for scholars to scrape old skins for reuse.
Reviewing the results from the second year pandemicWilliams was struck by some odd numbers found in the St Catherine’s Monastery Folios.
Researchers were stunned when he handed the page to French scientific historians. Victor Gysembergh, an historian at the French national scientific and research centre CNRS (Paris) SubmittedJo Marchant NatureIt was obvious that we had star coordinates “immediately.”
How do we find out who wrote these coordinates?
The short answer is we don’t – at least not with full certainty. However, experts know that the Greek Astronomer was correct. Hipparchus, was involved in a star catalog for the western world’s skies between 162 BCE and 127 BCE.
Hipparchus has been called the ‘father of astronomy’ in many historical texts. He is also credited with discovering that Earth’s axis ‘wobbles’ on its own in what is now called a precession. Hipparchus is also believed to have been the first to calculate the motions for the Sun and Moon.
Researchers looked at the star map hidden behind the text from the St Catherine’s Monastery parchments and worked backwards in order to determine Earth’s precession when the map was created. The precession predicted for our planet was roughly represented by the coordinates of the stars. around 129 BCE, Within Hipparchus’ lifetime.
The astronomer created the oldest star catalog before this map was discovered. Claudius PtolemyThree centuries after Hipparchus, the second century AD was completed.
Hipparchus left only one other work, a commentary on an observatory poem that described the constellations. Hipparchus provided many coordinates for the stars in his book. Commentary on the PhaenomenaIt is very similar to the document from St Catherine’s Monastery. However, the fragmented text may be hard to decipher.
The folios from Egypt can only provide the legal coordinates for Corona Borealis. However, researchers believe it is probable that Hipparchus mapped the entire night sky at one point.
Without a telescope, this work would have been difficult and time-consuming.
Researchers claim that the secret passage is as follows:
“Corona Borealis, lying in the northern hemisphere, in length spans 9°¼ from the first degree of Scorpius to 10°¼8 in the same zodiacal sign (i.e. in Scorpius). In breadth it spans 6°¾ from 49° from the North Pole to 55°¾.
Within it, the star (β CrB) to the West next to the bright one (α CrB) leads (i.e. is the first to rise), being at Scorpius 0.5°. The fourth9 star (ι CrB) to the East of the bright one (α CrB) is the last (i.e. to rise) [. . .]10 49° from the North Pole. Southernmost (δ CrB) is the third counting from the bright one (α CrB) towards the East, which is 55°¾ from the North Pole.”
These notations are based on ancient Greek terminology. The term “length” refers to the East-West extension a constellation. While the term “breadth” describes the North-South extension.
Hipparchus mathematics seems to be far more reliable than Ptolemy’s later works. It is within one degree what modern astronomers would find. This indicates that Ptolemy didn’t simply copy Hipparchus’ work.
Another manuscript, a Latin translation PhaenomenaFrom the 8th Century AD, shares similar structure, terminology, and content to Corona Borealis passage. This suggests it may also be based on Hipparchus work.
These constellations are Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, respectively. Many of the star’s values are similar to what is seen in Hipparchus. Commentary.
Hipparchus was suggested by some astronomers as the author of the original coordinates cited in the Latin documents. However, the discovery and publication of this new text gives further support to that theory.
Mathieu Ossendrijver is a historian of astronomy at Berlin’s Free University. Submitted Nature.
“This star catalogue that was hovering in literature as an almost hypothetical thing is now very concrete.”
Researchers believe that the monastery’s papers will yield more legible text in the future.
The study was published in Journal for the History of Astronomy.
