Photo by European Southern Observatory on Flickr.com
The world’s oldest star chart, which had been missing for over 2,000 years and was crucial to the history of science, has been found thanks to recent research in France. Scientists have shown that the manuscript’s illustrations line up with the stars’ positions in 129 BC. Additionally, the researchers were able to discern the Corona Borealis constellation’s coordinates on the map with simplicity.
The star map created by the 2nd century AD astronomer Hipparchus is known as the earliest effort in recorded history to record the true locations of celestial bodies with fixed coordinates.
The star chart’s original copies were lost in the centuries that followed their creation, and today the only way to access the information they represented is through reference to other sources.
The text of a Middle Ages Christian book from the Monastery of Saint Catherine in Egypt was found to include different portions of Hipparchus’ star chart, according to a team led by professor Victor Gysembergh of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).
