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Space Science

Is Atlas Holding Hipparchus' Lost Star Map? 421

Posted by timothy from the that's-pretty-weighty dept.
cr0kin0le writes "The Farnese Atlas at the Naples National Archaeological Museum may be holding a celestial globe which accurately depicts the long-lost star catalog of Hipparchus, according to a physics professor at Louisiana State University."
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Is Atlas Holding Hipparchus' Lost Star Map? More

Is Atlas Holding Hipparchus' Lost Star Map?

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  • Thanks a bunch (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:05AM (#11393207)
    Why the hell did you link Wikipedia in the blurb, now I can't karma whore...

  • What's up with the modified statue? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Harald74 ( 40901 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:06AM (#11393215) Homepage Journal
    In the NYTimes.com picture, they added a leaf... Is this some American thing? /European
    • cause its just a [i]fig[/i]ment of your imagination
    • Probably an american thing.

      Remember this is the country that ground to a virtual halt at the sight of half a breast.
      • A friend of mine showed me an interesting essay that starts with a mention of the Jackson wardrobe malfunction, and goes into European culture, morality, the censorship of art, and other issues.

        Freedom and Decency [firstthings.com] -- Here's a sentence pulled from the middle.

        Is good art suppressed more by rules of public decency (even when applied with a heavy hand) or by the barbarism of a culture whose sensibilities have become so debauched by constant exposure to the scabrous and the vile as to have become incapable o

    • Re:What's up with the modified statue? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:17AM (#11393259)
      The leaf seems to be real. It's probably the doing of the (very European) Pope Pius the IX in 1857, who thought that naked statues should be covered up. In recent years they have been restored, and the NY Times probably used an old picture - whether or not that was on purpose we don't know.
      • Probably not. They all use stock photos, even the Greek [ekathimerini.com].

        Remember the saying "Never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by stupidity"? Yeah, works for sloth too.

      • Pius IX was mad as a fish. (Score:4, Funny)

        by aug24 ( 38229 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:12AM (#11394090) Homepage
        Among his other acts were the declaration (after a vote, no less) that the Pope was infallible (which, because he, the Pope, was infallible, must be right - right?) and the abduction of a jewish couple's child after the child had been secretly baptised by a servant, on the grounds that a 'christian' child must be brought up by christians. Nutter.

        Incidentally, it has been suggested that his empire-building paved the way for the powerful modern vatican, and was a direct response to the formation of the modern state of Italy, which had removed a lot of the power of the church. So possibly not such a nutter. Nah, only kidding: Nutter!

        Justin.

      • Museo Archeologico Nazionale de Napoli & Sex (Score:5, Informative)

        by theycallmerenda ( 765018 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:50AM (#11394295)
        The linked photo is from the Naples Archeological Museum (Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli). The NYTimes photo is from the Griffith Observatory in LA. Hence they're not necessarily the same piece of stone, and the latter may be a copy of the original in Naples. On another porn-related note, the Naples Museum is well known across the world for its beloved "Secret Room," full of sexually explicit artifacts dug up from Pompeii and other Roman sites. That, along with the awesome mosaics, are well worth the trip to Naples. Naples has a bad rap for a being unsafe (and parts of it are) but anyone going to Italy should surely go.
    • Today, the majority of people (in Europe) aren't shocked at the depiction of nude people in statues, paintings, ...

      But there were other times, when nude statues/paintings were altered to "protect the innocent". There are even cases of nude crucifixes being alterd with a loin cloth.

      Luckily, the morals have evolved beyond the hypocrisy of the church of old times
      • You call current moral an 'evolution'? One man's evolution is another's rapid descent.

        Anyway, the "church of old times" sponsored an enormous quantity of art that happened to depict figures in the nude. As did religious confraternities and civic organizations.

        Now, if you want to talk about some of the more ascetic strains of the reformed churches in Northern Europe, that's another issue. They loathed what they saw as the pagan excesses of religious art. Many of them were against representational art entir
        • Yes, I do consider current moral an evolution to the better.
          Why? Simply because nudity is nothing to be ashamed of, we are all born the same way: nude.
          I'm sure that, were nudity considered natural and not obscene, there would be far fewer sex crimes.

          Yes, the (Catholic) church sponsored a lot of religuous nude art because ie in the middle ages nudity was common, most farmers and their family worked their fields naked (to spare their clothes).

          It was only when the puritan era began that the church began to p

    • Danish porn (Score:5, Funny)

      by koi88 ( 640490 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:28AM (#11393311)

      In the NYTimes.com picture, they added a leaf... Is this some American thing? /European

      Of course The American Version Is The Correct Version. Don't trust Our Media?
      The danish version is just a filthy porn version from this well-known immoral little country.
    • Is this some American thing?

      Yes, and we call it "Ashcrofting [nydailynews.com]".

      It's good for you.

      • Re:What's up with the modified statue? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Harald74 ( 40901 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:45AM (#11393385) Homepage Journal
        Oh, you have a word for it... That really sums it up, doesn't it?

        We have a quite a few American tourists over here [visitnorway.com], and I haven't seen anyone freak out over our park full of nude statues [museumsnett.no]. Do narrow-minded and prudish Americans stay at home, while the broad-minded and friendly ones visit Europe in the summer?

        Just asking...
        • Do narrow-minded and prudish Americans stay at home, while the broad-minded and friendly ones visit Europe in the summer?
          Yeah, probably.
        • Do narrow-minded and prudish Americans stay at home, while the broad-minded and friendly ones visit Europe in the summer?

          You have the zelot-prudes who don't allow evolution to be taught in the classroom. They don't travel for the most part. The ones who do buy bulk plastic fig leaves at staple them everywhere.

        • Do narrow-minded and prudish Americans stay at home, while the broad-minded and friendly ones visit Europe in the summer?

          No, they run for President and appoint genitalphobic attourney generals and FTC chairs.
        • We have a quite a few American tourists over here, and I haven't seen anyone freak out over our park full of nude statues. Do narrow-minded and prudish Americans stay at home, while the broad-minded and friendly ones visit Europe in the summer?

          Yes. The narrow-minded prudish Americans are quite happy with the narrow-minded prudish country we are and like to stay home away from disgusting, immoral Europe and their vulgar nude statue parks. The broad-minded friendly ones are very upset that we're the prud
        • don't even know where Europe lies.
          They probably think its a town in western Penssylvania or something.

        • Re:What's up with the modified statue? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Slur ( 61510 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @05:51AM (#11393562) Homepage Journal
          No, the prudish Americans are a tiny minority - bordering on a myth, really.

          The media props up this mythical form of being in order to Disney-fy the airwaves and make anyone who lives a normal flawed human lifestyle feel like a depraved piece of shit. This helps to prop up those capitalist endeavors that rely on a cowed populus, such as the snack industry, the advertising industry, and the defense industry.

          The underlying aim of the media is to teach ordinary Americans that they are in constant danger of being demonized as outsiders. They are told they can escape this alienation by joining the mass-consciousness. All they need do is practice the dubious virtues of jingoism and an unquestioning submission to authority and they will be accepted, loved, and embraced by the status-quo. ...They also have a lot to say about the relative value of light-skinned blonde daughters versus black-skinned kinky-haired daughters....
        • Sort of - the prudish ones stay home, but the prudish Americans with fetishes for naked statues (in the name of artistic characteristics, of course), are the people who travel...

    • Re:What's up with the modified statue? (Score:5, Informative)

      by madaxe42 ( 690151 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:45AM (#11393381) Homepage
      Actually, this is a European thing. Many old sculptures and statues were modified by the catholic church during past centuries in the name of 'decency'. Fig leaves were typically added, made of alabaster or a similar stone to the original statue, and affixed using concrete. This is also why many statues you will now see in this part of the world lack genitalia, as when the leaves were removed by a more enlightened age of society, the genitals fairly often came with.

      The NYTimes photo is most likely an accurate picture, however is probably a lot older than the picture on the other site, and the fig leaf was removed sometime after the photo was taken.
      • Unfortunately this wasn't only a Catholic 'thing' - in England the Victorian's 'erased' the huge cocks from chalk figures cut into the hills in the South/South West. These figures are thousands of years old (some have their genitals back).

        This was in the reign of a Church of England Queen, who was brought up as a Lutheran and had sympathies for the Catholics.

      • To quote the Guardian "...the British Museum's decision to chip off all the penises on Greek statues in its possession, to save the blushes of its Victorian visitors. (This act of egregious vandalism is remediable; the penises lie in a drawer at the museum and can be restored.)"

        J.
    • An article about one of the greatest scientists of antiquity, yet most comments here seem to be about Atlas' schlong.

    • In the NYTimes.com picture, they added a leaf... Is this some American thing? /European

      Let me explain the difference between American and European censorship:

      In America, you can't see naked people.

      In Europe, you can't see swastikas [independent.co.uk].

      In their respective locations, both types of censorship is done to protect the public. Both are about as silly. (Oh no! Think of the children! On no! We can't have neonazis! Lets limit free speech!)

      PS: Wasn't it the English that started adding figleafs to

      • "In America, you can't see naked people.
        In Europe, you can't see swastikas.
        In their respective locations, both types of censorship is done to protect the public. Both are about as silly"

        Allow me to explain why you're totally wrong in this:
        - swastika's are a cultural exponent of a proven harmful ideology.
        - Breasts, vagina's, penises and armpits for that matter are an integral part of the human being. Nothing about them has been proven harmful (except maybe armpits) in se.

        If you like, you can go one further
    • if dan brown is correct one of the popes (not sure which which one) decided to chip off all the penises on the statues of Men because they caused "lustful thoughts". After the removal they put plaster of paris fig leafs on. Theres supposed to be a a big box of stone wangs in the vatican basement somewhere...

    • Nudity is not porn (Score:4, Interesting)

      by CustomDesigned ( 250089 ) <stuart@gathman.org> on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @12:42PM (#11397292) Homepage Journal
      Porn is a difficult thing to define objectively. On the subject of defining pornography, an American Supreme Court justice said in frustration, "I know it when I see it, but I can't define it."

      The basis of Christian (Catholic and Protestant) ethics concerning sexual behaviour is the concept of "defrauding". In this context, to defraud someone is to arouse desires that cannot be righteously (or practically, for you libertines) fulfilled. Pornography is the ultimate in sexual defrauding, hence it condemned. Solomon puts it more positively, "I adjour you, awake not my love till it pleases." In other words, don't arouse me until the time is right and we can enjoy it to the utmost. (We don't need to be reminded of how Solomon did not exactly set a good example of sexual restraint. He regretted it afterward.)

      However, the precise stimuli which result in inappropriate arousal is very culturally relative. A Christian family I know was visited by a Christian family from Russia. They met them at the airport, and the American wife gave all of their visitors a big hug. Later, they discovered that this made the Russians very uncomfortable. (This may reflect a particular subculture in Russia, and not Russians in general.)

      My sister spent some years in the jungle in Papua New Gunea. The Christian women there were very few clothes, often going topless due to the climate. This did not seem to provoke the wrong response in the men. (Although I've heard that it does for American boys reading National Geographic.) Strangely, the Papua women were shocked by magazine photos of American women in bikinis. Objectively, the bikinis represented more cloth than what the Papua women wore, but there was something about the facial expression and body language that said "come hither", and thus became pornography.

      One more thing, Eros is exclusive and jealous by nature. Promiscuous behaviour does not contradict this. When that special someone says to us, "I love you!", we are thrilled. When we discover that they are saying the same thing to 10 other people, we are not so thrilled. Some people have expressed the idea that pornography might be appropriate within marriage (or whatever you libertines want to use as a substitute). However, because an image rather than the beloved becomes the source of arousal, it diminishes Eros and cheats both partners.

  • Interesting stuff (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dn15 ( 735502 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:09AM (#11393221)
    That's pretty cool. The scientists/naturalists/etc. of the past may have had a more primitive understanding of the universe, but they weren't stupid. It's amazing to think that they figured out so much about the sky so long ago with so few tools, when today most people don't have a working knowledge that even comes close to matching it.
    • The scientists/naturalists/etc of the past may have had a more primitive understanding of the universe, but they weren't stupid.

      That also explains why the statue is anatomically correct and has his thing showing.
    • Fun can be had be recreating old experiments. How about how Eratosthenes calculated the diameter of Earth [uh.edu]? Take that, Flat Earth Society!

    • Re:Interesting stuff (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Fred_A ( 10934 ) <fred@fredshomTWAINe.org minus author> on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @05:18AM (#11393475) Homepage
      They could see the sky at the time. There are fewer and fewer locations where you can get a clear view of the sky nowadays between light pollution and particles.
      • You know.... I've been thinking about that. How many people have good eyes by the age of 12? By the age of 40? Now, how long have glasses been around? I submit that many/most people of old couldn't see the sky very well due their own poor vision.
      • there are PLENTY of places to view the sky if you really want to. I could always go to Lapland. Or any other remote location not that far off. Really, it's not THAT hard! But I guess people just want to get a clear view of the sky without having to leave their homes in the city. Can't help you there buddy!
    • I've just realised that it apears (at least to me it does) that the acient greeks knew that the word was round ages before someone actually sailed around it to prove it was.

      Was this mainly due to the churches influence on science or was it just an easier way to represent the world then as a flat block?

  • Old charts interesting (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ev0lution ( 804501 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:27AM (#11393305)
    A sculpture probably isn't going to show enough detail, but old charts are interesting as they can show stars as being brighter or dimmer than they are today. For example, in the mid 19th century Eta Carinae was the second brightest star in the sky (after Sirius), now it's almost invisible to the naked eye (around 5th magnitude IIRC). The bright stars Castor and Pollux in Gemini were around the same magnitude, now Castor is dimmer (the brighter Pollux is still 'beta Geminorum'). I wonder what Hipparchos might have seen that we dont see now?

    • Re:Old charts interesting (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And what wonders can we see (Mars, Titan, Venus, etc etc, everything seen by the HST, CXB, etc etc) which they could never have imagined?

      And our children 100 generations from now, what will they know that we cannot imagine?

      Hell, I will never have children, but if I did, I know they, just ONE generation from now, would know far, far more about the universe than I can possibly imagine. I hope I live to see some of it myself.
    • the majesty of the night sky.

      most of the planet suffers from so much air and light pollution that many MANY people have no idea what the night sky looks like.

  • the amazing chaldeans (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xconfig ( 202399 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:28AM (#11393316)
    Reading this story, the most amazing thing to me was to think of the Chaldeans of Babylon laboriously making observations over at least half a millenium, before Hipparchus came along. Beats the story of Tycho Brahe [wikipedia.org], Johannes Kepler [wikipedia.org] and Isaac Newton.

    • Re:the amazing chaldeans (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gilroy ( 155262 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @06:08AM (#11393608) Homepage Journal
      Blockquoth the poster:

      Beats the story of Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton.

      Ah, yes, yet another tale wherein the ancient peoples outdo their modern imitators. Except for the whole "found a system of the world wherein the mode of learning is a self-correcting, self-perpetuating mechanism that leads to heights, depths, and breadths of knowledge undreamt of four centuries ago, much less twenty."

      I don't know much about the Chaldeans' observations, so I'll concede that they might have outstripped Tycho. But I'm fairly certain that they did not point out that the planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus, or that the orbits of any planet sweeps out equal areas in equal time, or that the period of a planet's orbit is proportional to the 3/2 power of its distance from the Sun (OK, technically, its semi-major axis). So, advantage: Kepler.

      And I am absolutely certain that they did not then note that a universal attraction of each planet for the others actually pulls them off said ellipses and causes a more complex motion -- let alone actually providing a method to correct for this -- oh, and incidentally, crafting a system of mechanics that not only allows one to build skyscrapers and suspension bridges but leads to investigations and methods that eventually discover electromagnetism, relativty, and quantum mechanics.

      So I think advantage: Newton, as well.

      The ancients were not idiots. They were just as smart as we are today. But they knew less than we do about the physical universe and they didn't have a system even remotely similar to science, that allowed a steady and self-correcting accumulation of knowledge. I can honestly not understand the apparently fervent need of many to worship at the altar of mist-enshrouded nameless ancestors, who "have" to be better than the well-documented founders of the modern world.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:32AM (#11393330)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Nice statue. (Score:3, Funny)

    by dabigpaybackski ( 772131 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:46AM (#11393387) Homepage
    I believe the original Greek name was "Grunting Under The Burden of Astronomy."

  • star map in naples (Score:5, Funny)

    by jotux ( 660112 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @05:21AM (#11393480)
    so does it tell you where Salvatore di Giacomo, Lorenzo Bernini, Gaetano Filangieri, and Enrico De Nicola used to live?
  • He's also carrying the plans for our ultimate weapon. If the rebels get a hold of it, we're doomed!

  • about astrology (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dario_moreno ( 263767 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @06:55AM (#11393765) Journal
    This map also reminds us that astrology is complete bullshit since due to equinox precession ("wobbling" in the article) zodiac signs have changed once since the Romans and twice since the Egyptians devised occidental astrology. Makes the system of prediction wrong in principle...

  • fast computing (Score:4, Funny)

    by joke_dst ( 832055 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @07:43AM (#11393949) Journal
    He calculated, within six and a half minutes, the length of a year That's some pretty fast calculating...

  • Slahdot is going downhill (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Merdalors ( 677723 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:11AM (#11394086)
    This is a good example of how Slashdot is degenerating into irrelevance.

    The Farnese Atlas is an interesting example of [1] lost knowledge being rediscovered, [2] ancient wisdom forgotten during the Dark Ages, and what do we get?

    ... nattering about pee-pees.

  • Map of the stars' homes (Score:3, Informative)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:35AM (#11394216) Homepage Journal
    Ancient beliefs combined stars, religion, navigation and folk heroes into a single "art" of "myth". One fascinating, though really long, essay regarding their involution, is called Hamlet's Mill [google.com]. I wonder how this map could be decoded to learn more about who the Neapolitans, and their cartographic predecessor, Hipparchus, had "commerce" with.

  • So much for astronomy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hcdejong ( 561314 ) <hobbes@x m s n e t . nl> on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @10:20AM (#11395354)
    Browsing at +1, the topic contains 181 comments in 3 threads. The majority (like, 175 comments) are in "What's up with the modified statue", discussing a frigging fig leaf.
    # of comments saying "Cool that we found this ancient star map", or otherwise even remotely related to astronomy: zero.
    (yeah, I know, "this is /., what else did you expect")
    So I'll say it: Cool that we found this ancient star map. Pity we don't have Hipparchus' complete works, though.

  • Obligatory Atlas quote (Score:3, Funny)

    by Stormwatch ( 703920 ) <rodrigogirao@noSPAM.hotmail.com> on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @12:00PM (#11396788) Homepage
    "Mr. Rearden," said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, "if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - what would you tell him to do?"

    "I... don't know. What... could he do? What would you tell him?"

    "To shrug."

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