A Roman statue of Atlas -- the mythical titan who carried the heavens on his shoulders -- holds clues to the long-lost work of the ancient astronomer Hipparchus, an astronomical historian said Tuesday.
The statue in question is known as the Farnese Atlas, a 7-foot tall marble work which resides in the Farnese Collection in the National Archeological Museum in Naples, Italy.
What makes it important to scientists is not the titan's muscular form but the globe he supports: carved constellations adorn its surface in exactly the locations Hipparchus would have seen in his day, suggesting that the sculptor based the globe on the ancient astronomer's star catalog, which no modern eyes have seen.
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Hipparchus, who flourished around 140-125 BC, is believed to have been one of the world's first path-breaking astronomers. Among other innovations, he put together the first comprehensive list of the hundreds of stars he observed, known as a star catalog.
This catalog no longer exists, and previously the only evidence for it came from references made to it by astronomers who followed Hipparchus, Schaefer said.
Yep, they do move. It seems that a lot of them are supposedly following some possible universal orbit. I think I read somewhere that our own galaxy is supposed to be moving in an orbital fashion, according to some astronomers.
Astronomy is pretty interesting. There was a report of an old church somewhere in the states that was burned down, and the church members decided to rebuild it in it's original form, including rebuilding the interior exactly as it was before right down to the very last detail as recorded in a series of pictures that were taken inside the church over several years. One interesting attribute was the sanctuary's ceiling, which had been painted to resemble the sky at night, complete with stars. The church members thought that the stars were just casually painted on, but it turns out, when the artist assigned to duplicate the starry ceiling examined the stars, she could find no pattern, and on a hunch, she had an astronomer colleague examine the pictures of the ceiling. He discovered that the stars were an exact replica of the position of the stars in the sky at the time the church ceiling was painted, as it would've been seen at night if there was no roof on the church.
very interesting how so many years ago these people were able to create suchexact im ages of the sky with limited tools, were talking about a couple of hundruds of years in the case of the church, but millians of years in the case of the statues, amazing
Actually, thousands for the statue, but you're right, it is something quite interesting. And I find it amusing that it seems like the common belief is that people of the ancient world were somehow less intelligent than the people of the modern era. The Great Library at Alexandria was supposed to have housed the accumulated knowledge of the world and it was supposed to have been amazing knowledge that we might have totally lost forever when the Library was destroyed and most if not all of the books inside it were burned.
opps my mistake ... i didnt mean millians i couldnt spell milenia, so i guess i goffed.
i supose because we have lots of modern tools to aid in all the skills, we think we're smarter, but really they are, because they designed some of the techniques and equipment we use today, or at least the theory.
i supose in the time of Alexandria they owned most of the Known world of the time, so as a result it was really the knoledge of that area, which was basically the whole world - who knows if they were all desroyed, or just stolen. they could have been really intelegent, and atcheved flight and electricity, and we dont know it. and all that was lost with the scrolls
01-18-2005 01:18 AM
i didnt mean millians i couldnt spell milenia, so i guess i goffed.
- who knows if they were all desroyed, or just stolen. they could have been really intelegent, and atcheved flight and electricity, and we dont know it. and all that was lost with the scrolls
