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Dark Cloud Constellation
A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The first constellations were likely defined in prehistory. People used them to relate stories of their beliefs, experiences, creation, and mythology. Different cultures and countries invented their own constellations, some of which lasted into the early 20th century before today's constellations were internationally recognized. The recognition of constellations has changed significantly over time. Many changed in size or shape. Some became popular, only to drop into obscurity. Some were limited to a single culture or nation. Naming constellations also helped astronomers and navigators identify stars more easily. Twelve (or thirteen) ancient constellations belong to the zodiac (straddling the ecliptic, which the Sun, Moon, and planets all traverse). The origins of the zodiac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orion (constellation)
Orion is a prominent set of stars visible during winter in the northern celestial hemisphere. It is one of the IAU designated constellations, 88 modern constellations; it was among :Constellations listed by Ptolemy, the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy. It is named after Orion (mythology), a hunter in Greek mythology. Orion is most prominent during winter evenings in the Northern Hemisphere, as are five other constellations that have stars in the Winter Hexagon asterism (astronomy), asterism. Orion's two brightest stars, Rigel (β) and Betelgeuse (α), are both among the List of brightest stars, brightest stars in the night sky; both are supergiants and slightly variable star, variable. There are a further six stars brighter than magnitude 3.0, including three making the short straight line of the Orion's Belt asterism (astronomy), asterism. Orion also hosts the radiant (meteor shower), radiant of the annual Orionids, the strongest meteor shower as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Babylonian Astronomy
Babylonian astronomy was the study or recording of celestial objects during the early history of Mesopotamia. The numeral system used, sexagesimal, was based on 60, as opposed to ten in the modern decimal system. This system simplified the calculating and recording of unusually great and small numbers. During the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Babylonian astronomers developed a new empirical approach to astronomy. They began studying and recording their belief system and philosophies dealing with an ideal nature of the universe and began employing an internal logic within their predictive planetary systems. This was an important contribution to astronomy and the philosophy of science, and some modern scholars have thus referred to this approach as a scientific revolution. This approach to astronomy was adopted and further developed in Greek and Hellenistic astrology. Classical Greek and Latin sources frequently use the term Chaldeans for the philosophers, who were cons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IAU Designated Constellations
In contemporary astronomy, 88 constellations are recognized by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Each constellation is a region of the sky bordered by arcs of right ascension and declination, together covering the entire celestial sphere. Their boundaries were officially adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1928 and published in 1930. The ancient Mesopotamians and later the Greeks established most of the northern constellations in international use today, listed by the Roman-Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy. The constellations along the ecliptic are called the zodiac. When explorers mapped the stars of the southern skies, European astronomers proposed new constellations for that region, as well as ones to fill gaps between the traditional constellations. Because of their Roman and European origins, every constellation has a Latin name. In 1922, the International Astronomical Union adopted three-letter abbreviations for 89 constellations, the modern list of 88 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Southern Celestial Hemisphere
The southern celestial hemisphere, also called the Southern Sky, is the Southern Hemisphere, southern half of the celestial sphere; that is, it lies south of the celestial equator. This arbitrary sphere, on which seemingly fixed stars form constellations, diurnal motion, appears to rotate westward around a celestial pole, polar axis as the Earth Earth's rotation, rotates. At all times, the entire Southern Sky is visible from the geographic South Pole; less of the Southern Sky is visible the latitude, further north the observer is located. The northern counterpart is the northern celestial hemisphere. Astronomy In the context of astronomical discussions or writing about celestial cartography, celestial mapping, it may also simply then be referred to as the Southern Hemisphere. For the purpose of celestial mapping, the sky is considered by Astronomer, astronomers as the inside of a sphere divided in two halves by the celestial equator. The Southern Sky or Southern Hemisphere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three Western canon, canonical poets of Latin literature. The Roman Empire, Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegy, elegists.Quint. ''Inst.'' 10.1.93 Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus Exile of Ovid, exiled him to Constanța, Tomis, the capital of the newly-organised province of Moesia, on the Black Sea, where he remained for the last nine or ten years of his life. Ovid himself attributed his banishment to a "poem and a mistake", but his reluctance to disclose specifics has resulted in much speculation among scholars. Ovid is most famous for the ''Metamorphoses'', a continuous mythological narrative in fifteen books written in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metamorphoses (Ovid)
The ''Metamorphoses'' (, , ) is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar in a mythico-historical framework comprising over 250 myths, 15 books, and 11,995 lines. Although it meets some of the criteria for an epic, the poem defies simple genre classification because of its varying themes and tones. Ovid took inspiration from the genre of metamorphosis poetry. Although some of the ''Metamorphoses'' derives from earlier treatment of the same myths, Ovid diverged significantly from all of his models. The ''Metamorphoses'' is one of the most influential works in Western culture. It has inspired such authors as Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, and William Shakespeare. Numerous episodes from the poem have been depicted in works of sculpture, painting, and music, especially during the Renaissance. There was a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Almagest
The ''Almagest'' ( ) is a 2nd-century Greek mathematics, mathematical and Greek astronomy, astronomical treatise on the apparent motions of the stars and planetary paths, written by Ptolemy, Claudius Ptolemy ( ) in Koine Greek. One of the most influential scientific texts in history, it canonized a geocentric model of the Universe that was accepted for more than 1,200 years from its origin in Hellenistic Roman-era Alexandria, Alexandria, in the medieval Byzantine and Islamic Golden Age, Islamic worlds, and in Western Europe through the Middle Ages and early Renaissance until Copernicus. It is also a key source of information about ancient Greek astronomy. Ptolemy set up a public inscription at Canopus, Egypt, in 147 or 148. Norman T. Hamilton found that the version of Ptolemy's models set out in the ''Canopic Inscription'' was earlier than the version in the ''Almagest''. Hence the ''Almagest'' could not have been completed before about 150, a quarter-century after Ptolemy began ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexandria
Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile Delta, Nile River delta. Founded in 331 BC by Alexander the Great, Alexandria grew rapidly and became a major centre of Hellenic civilisation, eventually replacing Memphis, Egypt, Memphis, in present-day Greater Cairo, as Egypt's capital. Called the "Bride of the Mediterranean" and "Pearl of the Mediterranean Coast" internationally, Alexandria is a popular tourist destination and an important industrial centre due to its natural gas and petroleum, oil pipeline transport, pipelines from Suez. The city extends about along the northern coast of Egypt and is the largest city on the Mediterranean, the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second-largest in Egypt (after Cairo), the List of largest cities in the Arab world, fourth- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzantine, Islamic science, Islamic, and Science in the Renaissance, Western European science. The first was his astronomical treatise now known as the ''Almagest'', originally entitled ' (, ', ). The second is the ''Geography (Ptolemy), Geography'', which is a thorough discussion on maps and the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the astrological treatise in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian physics, Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day. This is sometimes known as the ' (, 'On the Effects') but more commonly known as the ' (from the Koine Greek meaning 'four books'; ). The Catholic Church promoted his work, which included the only mathematically sound geocentric model of the Sola ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Argo Navis
Argo Navis (the Ship Argo), or simply Argo, is one of Ptolemy's 48 constellations, now a grouping of three IAU constellations. It is formerly a single large constellation in the southern sky. The genitive is "Argus Navis", abbreviated "Arg". John Flamsteed and other early modern astronomers called it Navis (the Ship), genitive "Navis", abbreviated "Nav". The constellation proved to be of unwieldy size, as it was 28% larger than the next largest constellation and had more than 160 easily visible stars. The 1755 catalogue of Nicolas Louis de Lacaille divided it into the three modern constellations that occupy much of the same area: Carina (the keel), Puppis (the poop deck or stern), and Vela (the sails). Argo derived from the ship '' Argo'' in Greek mythology, sailed by Jason and the Argonauts to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece. Some stars of Puppis and Vela can be seen from Mediterranean latitudes in winter and spring, the ship appearing to skim along the "riv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aratus
Aratus (; ; c. 315/310 240 BC) was a Greek didactic poet. His major extant work is his hexameter poem ''Phenomena'' (, ''Phainómena'', "Appearances"; ), the first half of which is a verse setting of a lost work of the same name by Eudoxus of Cnidus. It describes the constellations and other celestial phenomena. The second half is called the ''Diosemeia'' (Διοσημεῖα "Forecasts"), and is chiefly about weather lore. Although Aratus was somewhat ignorant of Greek astronomy, his poem was very popular in the Greek and Roman world, as is proven by the large number of commentaries and Latin translations, some of which survive. Life There are several accounts of Aratus's life by anonymous Greek writers, and the Suda and Eudocia also mention him. From these it appears that he was a native of Soli in Cilicia (although one authority says Tarsus). He is known to have studied with Menecrates in Ephesus and Philitas in Cos. As a disciple of the Peripatetic philosopher Praxipha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
