Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The oldest known star chart may be a carved ivory Mammoth tusk, drawn by early people from Asia who moved into Europe, that was discovered in Germany in 1979. This artifact is 32,500 years old and has a carving that resembles the constellation Orion , although it could not be confirmed and could also be a pregnancy chart.
The whole set of star maps contained 1,300 stars. The Dunhuang map or Dunhuang Star map is one of the first known graphical representations of stars from ancient Chinese astronomy, dated to the Tang dynasty (618–907). Before this map, much of the star information mentioned in historical Chinese texts had been questioned. [2]
The age of the oldest known stars approaches the age of the universe, about 13.8 billion years. Some of these are among the first stars from reionization (the stellar dawn), ending the Dark Ages about 370,000 years after the Big Bang. [1] This list includes stars older than 12 billion years, or about 87% of the age of the universe.
A 32,500-year-old carved ivory mammoth tusk could contain the oldest known star chart (resembling the constellation Orion). [8] It has also been suggested that drawings on the wall of the Lascaux caves in France dating from 33,000 to 10,000 years ago could be a graphical representation of the Pleiades, the Summer Triangle, and the Northern Crown.
c. 300 BC — star catalog of Timocharis of Alexandria; c. 134 BC — Hipparchus makes a detailed star map; c. 150 — Ptolemy completes his Almagest, which contains a catalog of stars, observations of planetary motions, and treatises on geometry and cosmology; c. 705 — Dunhuang Star Chart, a manuscript star chart from the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang
The enumeration of stars in the Three Stars Each catalogues includes 36 stars, three for each month. The determiner glyph for "constellation" or "star" in these lists is MUL ( 𒀯 ), originally a pictograph of three stars, as it were a triplet of AN signs; e. g. the Pleiades are referred to as a "star cluster" or "star of stars" in the lists ...
These 'Diagonal star tables' or star charts are also known as 'diagonal star clocks'. In the past they have also been known as 'star calendars', or 'decanal clocks'. [10] These star charts featuring the paintings of Egyptian deities, decans, constellations, and star observations are also found on the ceilings of tombs and temples.
Although ancient Babylonians and Greeks also observed the sky and catalogued stars, no such complete record of the stars may exist or survive. Hence, this is the oldest chart of the skies at present. According to recent studies, the map may date the manuscript to as early as the seventh century CE (Tang dynasty). Scholars believe the star map ...