The star maps are works of art in themselves & are among the most elegant treasures bequeathed to us by astronomers of the past
The constellations give us a very real link with the most ancient civilizations
It is a heritage we share whenever we look at the night sky
ARATUS OF SOLI was a Greek poet from Macedonia in the early C3rd B.C. His only surviving work is the Phaenomena, a book describing the constellations and weather signs.
A celestial map by the Dutch cartographer Frederik de Wit, 1670
12. Charting the Chinese Sky
"Additional to 255 star groups & predating them were 28 ancient divisions of the ecliptic known as xiu or mansions, listed in the table. These were markers for following the nightly progress of the Moon orbiting the Earth"
"The Chinese sky was divided into five great regions or palaces called gong 宫. These were equated with the directions north, south, east and west and also with a middle region"
A more complete representation of the Chinese sky than the Dunhuang manuscript is provided by this circular chart from Suzhou, formerly known in the west as Soochow
You may have heard the latest Nord Stream news, but there is actually more to the story than has been published so far...(with a bit of monkey digging...)
Rewind 5 - 20 years, Somali Knife Gangs, the Truth (1)
Malis are so violent because they have a chip on their shoulder. They experienced acism In the 2000s, mostly by Jamaicans, not English. They used to get called “pirates”, “5 head”, “dirty Somali”