Amazing stuff!
"The emperor’s chariot. A celestial marketplace. A toilet with excrement represented by a single star. Early Chinese astronomers, likely including a legendary one named Shi Shen, at some point grouped the stars they saw into depictions of an imperial court in the sky. ...
After testing their method on more recent, better understood Chinese catalogs in a study published last year, [the researchers] tried to look at Shi’s catalog. Their new results, soon to be published in Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, argue some star measurements within Shi’s catalog were updated around 125 C.E.—but that the other half of the star coordinates date back to about 355 B.C.E., around when Shi was supposed to have lived. ..."
From the abstract:
"Ancient stellar observations are a valuable cultural heritage, profoundly influencing both cultural domains and modern astronomical research. The \textit{Shi's Star Catalog}, the oldest extant star catalog in China, faces controversy regarding its observational epoch. Determining this epoch via precession assumes accurate ancient coordinates and correspondence with contemporary stars, posing significant challenges.
This study introduces a novel method using the Generalized Hough Transform to ascertain the catalog's observational epoch. This approach statistically accommodates errors in ancient coordinates and discrepancies between ancient and modern stars, addressing limitations in prior methods.
Our findings date the \textit{Shi's Star Catalog} to the 4th century BCE, with 2nd-century CE adjustments.
In comparison, the Western tradition's oldest known catalog, the Ptolemaic Star Catalog (2nd century CE), likely derives from the Hipparchus Star Catalog (2nd century BCE). Thus, the \textit{Shi's Star Catalog} is identified as the world's oldest known star catalog. Beyond establishing its observation period, this study aims to consolidate and digitize these cultural artifacts."
Determining the observational epoch of the Shi's star catalog using the generalized Hough transform method (preprint, open access)
A seventh century star chart found in Dunhuang, China, includes this map of the celestial north pole based on a synthesis of ancient Chinese astronomical schools of thought.
The map’s faded, reddish stars belong to a star catalog created by the legendary Chinese astronomer Shi Shen [4th century BCE]: a record that a new study now claims is the oldest surviving star catalog found anywhere in the word.
Around the first century B.C.E., Chinese astronomers started to use devices called armillary spheres to measure objects’ coordinates in the night sky. This more modern armillary sphere, built in the 18th century, stands on the grounds of a Beijing observatory founded in the 15th century.
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