The oldest map of the stars, made around 129 BC. by the ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus was known only from references in later works, but researchers have uncovered passages in an ancient manuscript that are “the most authoritative yet.”
Writings on the parchment, known as the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, had been scrapped and the manuscript reused for centuries, but using imaging techniques the team was able to look back in time to “a wealth of ancient astronomical information”.
Scientists at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) also took advantage of the precision of Hipparchus’ measurements and found that they corresponded to the arrangement of the stars in 129 BC. B.C., although only coordinates for the constellation Corona Borealis are legible.
However, the team suspects the entire map once spanned the pages until it was washed away and reused to transcribe ancient Syriac text.
Ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus’ long-lost star map has been found hidden among writings on a parchment that has been reused for centuries
Not much is known about the astronomer, except that he was born in Nicea, a city in the region of Bithynia in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and is said to have died on Rhodes.
Hipparchus wrote extensively about the cosmos, drawing inspiration from pre-Socratic philosophers such as Aristarchus of Samos, Eratosthenes and Archimedes of Syracuse, as well as Babylonian and Egyptian sources.
All but one of his writings have been lost and mentioned only in second-hand accounts, notably the Almagest, written by Ptolemy compiled in the 2,300 years after Hipparchus’ death.
The only surviving work of Hipparchus is an astronomical poem describing stellar constellations, and the coordinates given are consistent with those revealed in the document
The manuscript comes from the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Saint Catherine in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt
The only surviving work is an astronomical poem describing stellar constellations, and the coordinates given match those revealed in the document.
According to the study published in the Journal for the History of Astronomy, the hidden passage reads as follows: “Corona Borealis, located in the Northern Hemisphere, extends in longitude from 9°¼ from the first degree of Scorpio to 10°¼8 in the same zodiac sign ( e.g. in Scorpio). In latitude it extends 6°¾ from 49° from the North Pole to 55°¾.
‘In it, the star (β CrB) leads to the west next to the bright (α CrB) (ie rises first), which is at Scorpio 0.5°.
‘The fourth9 star (ι CrB) east of the bright (α CrB) is the last (i.e. rising) [. . .]10 49° from the North Pole. Southernmost (δ CrB) is the third count east from the bright (α CrB), which is 55°¾ from the North Pole.’
The manuscript came from the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Saint Catherine in Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, but most of its 146 folios are now in the possession of the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC, reports Nature.
The pages are filled with a collection of 10th- or 11th-century Syrian texts, but the Codex Climaci Rescriptus is palimpsest, a parchment scraped from older text by the scribe so it could be reused – a technique used to trim paper save up .
The manuscript was analyzed in 2017 using multispectral imaging, which works like an X-ray system to see through text.
US researchers took photos of all 42 pages at different wavelengths of light and used computer algorithms to look for combinations of frequencies that enhanced the hidden text.
Writings on the parchment, known as the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, had been scrapped and the manuscript reused for centuries, but imaging techniques allowed the team to look back on “a wealth of ancient astronomical information”.
Of the 146, nine folios contained writings about the cosmos that scholars believe date back to the fifth or sixth century.
The astronomical information describes star origin myths by Eratosthenes and parts of a famous poem from the 3rd century BC. B.C. called Phaenomena, written by Aratus of Soli, and also highlight constellations.
Peter Williams, a Bible expert and Hebrew language lecturer at Cambridge University and co-author of the new study, was analyzing the slides during the COVID lockdown when he came across text that appears to describe star coordinates.
Excited by the find, he contacted the historian of science Victor Gysembergh of the CNRS in Paris, who translated the passage to find that it contained the longitude and latitude coordinates of the Corona Borealis constellation, as well as the coordinates for the stars to the north, south, east and west of it .
Gysembergh was certain this was the very last map when he saw the idiosyncratic way in which some of the dates are expressed and the accuracy of the measurements, which matched the placement of the stars 2,000 years ago.
Gysembergh and his colleagues used the data they discovered to confirm that the coordinates for three other stellar constellations (Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, and Draco) also came directly from Hipparchus in a separate Medieval Latin manuscript known as Aratus Latinus have to.
Mathieu Ossendrijver, an astronomy historian at Freie Universität Berlin, said in a statement: “The new fragment makes this much, much clearer.
“This star catalogue, which floated in literature as an almost hypothetical thing, has become very concrete.”
Researchers believe that Hipparchus’ original list, like Ptolemy’s, would have included observations of almost every visible star in the sky.
Since telescopes did not yet exist, Gysembergh suggested that the ancient Greek astronomer probably used a sighting tube that would have taken “untold hours of work”.
