![]() The earliest known star catalogues were compiled by the ancient Babylonian astronomers of Mesopotamia in the late 2nd millennium BC, during the Kassite Period ( ca. The oldest accurately dated star chart appeared in ancient Egyptian astronomy in 1534 BC. ![]() ![]() The Nebra sky disk, a 30 cm wide bronze disk dated to 1600 BC, bears gold symbols generally interpreted as a sun or full moon, a lunar crescent, several stars including the Pleiades cluster and possibly the Milky Way. Ī star chart drawn 5000 years ago by the Indians in Kashmir, which also depict a supernova for the first time in human history. The bovine in this panel may represent the constellation Taurus, with a pattern representing the Pleiades just above it. ![]() Īnother star chart panel, created more than 21,000 years ago, was found in the La Tête du Lion cave ( fr). Rappenglueck also discovered a drawing of the Northern Crown constellation in the cave of El Castillo (North of Spain), made in the same period as the Lascaux chart. He also suggested a panel in the same caves depicting a charging bison, a man with a bird's head and the head of a bird on top of a piece of wood, together may depict the Summer Triangle, which at the time was a circumpolar formation. This is dated from 33,000 to 10,000 years ago. German researcher Dr Michael Rappenglueck, of the University of Munich, has suggested that drawing on the wall of the Lascaux caves in France could be a graphical representation of the Pleiades open cluster of stars. This artifact is 32,500 years old and has a carving that resembles the constellation Orion, although it could not be confirmed and could also be a pregnancy chart. The oldest known star chart may be a carved ivory Mammoth tusk, drawn by early people from Asia who moved into Europe, that was discovered in Germany in 1979. The Sun, Moon, planets, have a perceptible movement over days (or weeks) to the background of stars while stars are so distant that they appear stationary in a human life.Farnese Atlas at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples Prehistory Ī variety of archaeological sites and artifacts found are thought to indicate ancient made star charts. Because of the movements of the celestial bodies themselves: In addition, the stroke of the Earth around the Sun shows us a different portion of the sky depending on the time of year. This causes the “rises” and “sets” of the stars. Why is the sky constantly changing? Because of the movements of the Earth:Īs the Earth rotates on itself, we see the sky scrolling as if we were on a ride: the whole sky seems to turn the hours around a point near Polaris, the North Star (center of the map). Scroll the sky day by day with the next day button to see that the stars are rising a little earlier each evening. These 4 minutes represent the difference between the length of a day (24 hours) and that of an earth’s rotation (23 hours and 56 minutes). Visit our shop and start exploring the night sky Did you know ?Įvery evening, the stars in the sky return to the same place 4 minutes early because the Earth’s movement in its orbit around the sun gives us a slightly different background of stars each night.
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