On 3 May 1374 BCE a solar eclipse was observed and recorded at Ugarit by Mesopotamian astronomers. "On the day of the new moon, in the month of Hiyar, the Sun was put to shame, and went down in the daytime, with Mars in attendance." Humour me - unpack that staggering assertion.
Some sources list this eclipse as occurring in 1375 but NASA's catalogue of solar eclipses clearly states 1374. (1375CE had eclipses in June and November.) Check out the catalogue and look back into the history of #astronomy. It's beautiful.
#Science allows us to correlate the historical records that survive with modern astronomical data and observations. Science shows us that these early #astronomers, with tools far more basic than ours, were painstaking and meticulous in their observations.
Truly, we stand on the shoulders of giants, most of whose names and lives are lost to history. But their work endures and enables us to go further. Don't stop reaching for the stars. #Mars in my lifetime? Hopefully. Mars this century? Why settle for that? Go on. Go on.
