Friday, October 19, 2007

Chinese Astronomy


Picture: Chinese Astronomy. Chinese Star Chart possibly dating from the 600s AD, Tang Dynasty

One cannot not link to history, archaeology, historical management, museum management without linking to science and development, that includes the developments of astronomy in Ancient China. One of my lecturers, Cai Da Feng from Fudan University, Shanghai, was interested in Astronomy. He is a busy man, but always find time to play around his hobby.

Chinese astronomers, like Roman and Sassanian astronomers of the same time period in Europe and West Asia, were very interested in the stars both for scientific reasons and because they believed that the skies could help predict the future.

One of these Chinese astronomers drew this star chart, which is the oldest one in the world. Even though telescopes and binoculars hadn't been invented yet, the chart shows some very faint stars that are very hard to see with just your eyes.

But along with this chart, there were also instructions for predicting the future based on the shape of clouds.

For more information on Chinese Astronomy, you can visit the link here: Chinese astronomy

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

interesting read. I would love to follow you on twitter. By the way, did you guys know that some chinese hacker had busted twitter yesterday again.

Anonymous said...

interesting read. I would love to follow you on twitter. By the way, did anyone know that some chinese hacker had busted twitter yesterday again.

Anonymous said...

I'm the kind of guy who enjoys to taste bran-new stuff. Currently I am constructing my private pv panels. I am managing it all alone without the aid of my staff. I am utilizing the internet as the only path to acheive that. I discovered a really awesome website which explains how to contruct solar panels and so on. The website explains all the steps involved in solar panel construction.

I'm not exactly sure about how precise the info given there is. If some guys over here who had xp with these things can have a see and give your feedback in the site it will be great and I would extremely treasure it, cause I really take an interest in [URL=http://solar-panel-construction.com]solar panel construction[/URL].

Thanks for reading this. U people are great.

ananth countinfinity blogger said...

i dont know whether stars been used once to predict future...but i hope some better ways lies unfolded in chineese history