By Aahil
October 26, 2022
Multispectral imaging of an ancient Greek palimpsest reveals fragments of astronomer Hipparchus's fable on the stars.
More than 2,100 years ago, the Greek astronomer Hipparchus mapped the stars.
For a long time, it was considered humanity's first attempt to assign numerical coordinates to stellar objects.
But despite its fame, the treatise existed only through the writings of another famous ancient astronomer named Claudius Ptolemy.
who compiled his own astronomical catalog some 400 years later.
Researchers believe they have found fragments of a lost historical document of Hipparchus hidden in a book of medieval manuscripts.
The discovery could shed new light not only on Hipparchus's attempt to map the night sky, but also on the history of astronomy.
Hipparchus, also known as the father of trigonometry, is often considered the greatest astronomer of ancient Greece.
Parts of his star map are shown in the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, a book of Syriac texts written in the 10th or 11th century.
Whose parchment pages were erased so that they could be rewritten, but there are still visible traces of their earlier form.