The Moon and Planets in Ancient Mesopotamia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathieu Ossendrijver
Keyword(s):  
Early Age ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Naked Eye ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Mathematical Astronomy ◽  
Ancient Mesopotamia ◽  
Religious Aspects ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
White Star

In ancient Mesopotamia, all five planets visible to the naked eye were known and studied, along with the Moon, the Sun, the stars, and other celestial phenomena. In all Mesopotamian sources concerning the Moon and the planets, be they textual or iconographical, the astronomical, astrological, and religious aspects are intertwined. The term “astral science” covers all forms of Mesopotamian scholarly engagement with celestial entities, including celestial divination and astrology. Modern research on Mesopotamian astral science began in the 19th century. Much research remains to be done, because important sources remain unpublished and new questions have been posed to published sources. From ca. 3000 bce onward, Mesopotamians used a calendar with months and years, which indicates that the Moon was studied at that early age. In cuneiform writing, the Sumerian and Akkadian names of the Moongod, Nanna/Sin, are attested since ca. 2500 bce. The most common Akkadian names of the five planets, Šiḫṭu (Mercury), Dilbat (Venus), Ṣalbatānu (Mars), White Star (Jupiter), and Kayyāmānu (Saturn), are attested first in 1800–1000 bce. The Moon, the Sun, and the planets were viewed as gods or manifestations of gods. From ca. 1800 bce onward, the phenomena of the Moon, the Sun, and the planets were studied as signs that were produced by the gods to communicate with humankind. Between ca. 600 bce and 100 ce, Babylonian scholars reported lunar and planetary phenomena in astronomical diaries and related texts. Their purpose was to enable predictions of the reported phenomena with period-based, so-called Goal-Year methods. After the end of the 5th century bce Babylonian astronomers introduced the zodiac and developed new methods for predicting lunar and planetary phenomena known as mathematical astronomy At about the same time they developed horoscopy and other forms of astrology that use the zodiac, the Moon, the Sun, and the planets to predict events on Earth.

scholarly journals Astronomy at the service of the Islamic society

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (S260) ◽  
pp. 514-521
Author(s):  
Ilias M. Fernini
Keyword(s):  
Proper Time ◽  
Astronomical Observatory ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
Mathematical Astronomy ◽  
Islamic Empire ◽  
New Moon ◽  
Islamic Society

AbstractThe Islamic society has great ties to astronomy. Its main religious customs (start of the Islamic month, direction of prayer, and the five daily prayers) are all related to two main celestial objects: the Sun and the Moon. First, the start of any Islamic month is related to the actual seeing of the young crescent after the new Moon. Second, the direction of prayer, i.e., praying towards Mecca, is related to the determination of the zenith point in Mecca. Third, the proper time for the five daily prayers is related to the motion of the Sun. Everyone in the society is directly concerned by these customs. This is to say that the major impetus for the growth of Islamic astronomy came from these three main religious observances which presented an assortment of problems in mathematical astronomy. To observe these three customs, a new set of astronomical observations were needed and this helped the development of the Islamic observatory. There is a claim that it was first in Islam that the astronomical observatory came into real existence. The Islamic observatory was a product of needs and values interwoven into the Islamic society and culture. It is also considered as a true representative and an integral par of the Islamic civilisation. Since astronomy interested not only men of science, but also the rulers of the Islamic empire, several observatories have flourished. The observatories of Baghdad, Cairo, Córdoba, Toledo, Maragha, Samarqand and Istanbul acquired a worldwide reputation throughout the centuries. This paper will discuss the two most important observatories (Maragha and Samarqand) in terms of their instruments and discoveries that contributed to the establishment of these scientific institutions.

The Moon and the Planets in Classical Greece and Rome

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Hannah
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Cultural Issue ◽  
Classical Greece ◽  
Naked Eye ◽  
The Past ◽  
Greek Astronomy ◽  
Evening Star ◽  
Compute Time

While the moon naturally featured in Mediterranean cultures from time immemorial, principally noted in the earliest literature as a marker of time, time-dependent constructs such as the calendar, and time-related activities, awareness and recognition of the five visible planets came relatively late to the Greeks and thence to the Romans. The moon underlies the local calendars of the Greeks, with documentary and literary evidence from the Late Bronze Age through the Imperial Roman period, and there are signs that the earliest Roman calendar also paid homage to the moon in its divisions of the month. However, although Homer in the 8th century BCE knows of a Morning and an Evening Star, he shows no indication of realizing that these are one and the same, the planet Venus. That particular identification may have come in the 6th century BCE, and it appears to have been not until the 4th century BCE that the Greeks recognized the other four planets visible to the naked eye—Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury. This awareness probably came via contact with Babylonian astronomy and astrology, where identification and observations of the planets had figured from the 2nd millennium BCE and served as a basis for astrological prognostications. But it is time, not astrology, that lies at the heart of Greek and Roman concerns with the moon and the planets. Indeed, the need to tell time accurately has been regarded as the fundamental motivation of Greek astronomy. A major cultural issue that long engaged the Greeks was how to synchronize the incommensurate cycles of the moon and the sun for calendrical purposes. Given the apparent irregularities of their cycles, the planets might seem to offer no obvious help with regard to time measurement. Nonetheless they were included by Plato in the 4th century BCE in his cosmology, along with the sun and moon, as heavenly bodies created specifically to compute time. Astrology then provided a useful framework in which the sun, moon, planets, and stars all combined to enable the interpretation and forecasting of life events. It became necessary for the Greeks, and their successors the Romans, to be able to calculate as accurately as possible the positions of the heavenly bodies in order to determine readings of the past, present, and future. Greek astronomy had always had a speculative aspect, as philosophers strove to make sense of the visible cosmos. A deep-seated assumption held by Greek astronomers, that the heavenly bodies moved in uniform, circular orbits, lead to a desire over the centuries to account for or explain away the observed irregularities of planetary motions with their stations and retrogradations. This intention “to save the phenomena,”— that is, to preserve the fundamental circularity—was said to have originated with Plato. While arithmetical schemes had sufficed in Babylonia for such calculation, it was a Greek innovation to devise increasingly complex geometric theories of circular motions (eccentrics and epicycles) in an effort to understand how the sun, moon, and planets moved, so as to place them more precisely in time and space.

The heliocentric path of the Moon

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 462-490
Author(s):  
Jacques Gapaillard
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Geometrical Proof ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Heated Debate ◽  
The 19Th Century

In his Astronomie populaire, Camille Flammarion points out that the heliocentric path of the Moon, which, according to him, has generally been represented as a sinuous curve, is actually concave everywhere towards the Sun. Flammarion’s observation is the starting point of this study which goes backwards in time, via often misinformed authors, to the mathematician who first established this counterintuitive property by means of a purely geometrical proof. The story also includes a heated debate between readers of a British periodical. Beginning in France at the end of the 19th century, the journey finishes in Scotland in the first half of the previous century.

Modelling Lunar Extremes

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Fisher ◽  
Lionel Sims
Keyword(s):  
High Precision ◽  
Celestial Mechanics ◽  
Computer Modelling ◽  
Landscape Context ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Moon

Claims first made over half a century ago that certain prehistoric monuments utilised high-precision alignments on the horizon risings and settings of the Sun and the Moon have recently resurfaced. While archaeoastronomy early on retreated from these claims, as a way to preserve the discipline in an academic boundary dispute, it did so without a rigorous examination of Thom’s concept of a “lunar standstill”. Gough’s uncritical resurrection of Thom’s usage of the term provides a long-overdue opportunity for the discipline to correct this slippage. Gough (2013), in keeping with Thom (1971), claims that certain standing stones and short stone rows point to distant horizon features which allow high-precision alignments on the risings and settings of the Sun and the Moon dating from about 1700 BC. To assist archaeoastronomy in breaking out of its interpretive rut and from “going round in circles” (Ruggles 2011), this paper evaluates the validity of this claim. Through computer modelling, the celestial mechanics of horizon alignments are here explored in their landscape context with a view to testing the very possibility of high-precision alignments to the lunar extremes. It is found that, due to the motion of the Moon on the horizon, only low-precision alignments are feasible, which would seem to indicate that the properties of lunar standstills could not have included high-precision markers for prehistoric megalith builders.

scholarly journals Historical sunspot records

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Arlt ◽  
José M. Vaquero
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Sunspot Number ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Group Sunspot ◽  
Naked Eye ◽  
Sunspot Numbers ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Physical Quantities

AbstractSunspot observations are available in fairly good numbers since 1610, after the invention of the telescope. This review is concerned with those sunspot observations of which longer records and drawings in particular are available. Those records bear information beyond the classical sunspot numbers or group sunspot numbers. We begin with a brief summary on naked-eye sunspot observations, in particular those with drawings. They are followed by the records of drawings from 1610 to about 1900. The review is not a compilation of all known historical sunspot information. Some records contributing substantially to the sunspot number time series may therefore be absent. We also glance at the evolution of the understanding of what sunspots actually are, from 1610 to the 19th century. The final part of the review illuminates the physical quantities that can be derived from historical drawings.

Sweat of the Sun and Tears of the Moon. Gold and Silver in Pre-Columbian Art

1967 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 215
Author(s):  
Earle R. Caley ◽  
Andre Emmerich
Keyword(s):  
The Sun ◽  
The Moon

scholarly journals How dim is dim? Precision of the celestial compass in moonlight and sunlight

2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1565) ◽  
pp. 697-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Dacke ◽  
M. J. Byrne ◽  
E. Baird ◽  
C. H. Scholtz ◽  
E. J. Warrant
Keyword(s):  
Dung Beetle ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Polarization Pattern ◽  
Animal Group ◽  
Straight Line ◽  
Celestial Orientation ◽  
Polarization Compass ◽  
Celestial Compass ◽  
Diurnal Species

Prominent in the sky, but not visible to humans, is a pattern of polarized skylight formed around both the Sun and the Moon. Dung beetles are, at present, the only animal group known to use the much dimmer polarization pattern formed around the Moon as a compass cue for maintaining travel direction. However, the Moon is not visible every night and the intensity of the celestial polarization pattern gradually declines as the Moon wanes. Therefore, for nocturnal orientation on all moonlit nights, the absolute sensitivity of the dung beetle's polarization detector may limit the precision of this behaviour. To test this, we studied the straight-line foraging behaviour of the nocturnal ball-rolling dung beetle Scarabaeus satyrus to establish when the Moon is too dim—and the polarization pattern too weak—to provide a reliable cue for orientation. Our results show that celestial orientation is as accurate during crescent Moon as it is during full Moon. Moreover, this orientation accuracy is equal to that measured for diurnal species that orient under the 100 million times brighter polarization pattern formed around the Sun. This indicates that, in nocturnal species, the sensitivity of the optical polarization compass can be greatly increased without any loss of precision.

scholarly journals XLIV. Variation of the compass, as observed on board the Endeavour Bark, in a voyage round the World

1771 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 422-432 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Sun ◽  
The Moon ◽  
The World

The day of the month is noted according to the nautical account, which therefore in all observations noted P. M. is one day forwarder than the civil account. The latitude in is deduced from the last preceding meridian altitude of the Sun; and the longitude in is corrected by the last observations of the distances of the moon from the Sun and stars.

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