The Ancient Catalogs

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1. The Ancient Catalogs

Astronomy was born in the five cradles of civilization, along the Nile Valley in Egypt, the Indus Valley along the western region of the Indian subcontinent, the Chinese city states on the banks of the Yellow River, the ancient regions of Me-soamerica from central Mexico down to the Andean South America and the an-cient city states of Mesopotamia in the fertile crescent. Each of these ancient cul-tures incorporated astronomy into calendar making, religion, mythology, and astrology. Many of these civilizations kept various forms of stars charts, but some of the most complete came Mesopotamia.

Many ancient empires lived in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia (“the land be-tween the rivers”). The Tigris and the Euphrates rivers provided water and rich fertile soil. It was the origin for the ancient societies of Sumer, Ubaid, Assyria, Akkaid and Babylonia. The oldest known astronomical observations appear in Babylonian Enuma Anu Enlil (translation “In the days of Anu and Enlil”) dating from 1200 BC. Tablet 63 of the Enuma Anu Enlil described the rising and setting of Venus over a period of 21 years. Another Babylonian text containing a compi-lation of astronomical data is the Mul-Apin. The Mul-Apin, written between 1200 and 1000 BC, presented a catalog of major stars and constellations along with their locations. The constellations described in the Mul-Apin are recognized today as the Bull (Taurus), the Lion (Leo), the Scorpion (Scorpio), and the Twins (Ge-mini) and the Sea Goat (Capricorn). Other parts of the Mul-Apin describe methods to measure the length of the day with water clocks and the gnomon. There are some historians that believe the astronomical observations of the night sky led the Babylonians t...

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...lding 160 feet in diameter and 120 feet tall. The observatory contained a marble sextant, an armil-lary sphere, and a triquetram. The most significant instrument of the Samarkand Observatory was a giant marble quadrant known as the Fakhri Quadrant. It ran through the center of the observatory between two high walls in a semi circle from the ceiling on one side of the building sloping downward below the floor and arc-ing up to the ceiling of the opposite wall. Along the arc ran two set of marble tiles inscribed with digit marking the degrees. The astronomers would sight the star through a small circular sighting device at the top of one wall and record their po-sition along the marble scale. The enormous size of the quadrant, a radius of 116 feet and an optical separability of 180 seconds of arc allowed for measurements to be more accurate than ever before achieved.

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