Abstract
For well over two millennia, Chinese astronomers observed and recorded a wide variety of phenomena in the heavens: eclipses, comets, sunspots, aurorae, strange clouds and other meteorological phenomena. For a somewhat shorter period, there were also recorded Japanese and Korean observations of the skies. In terms of numbers over the relevant time intervals, significantly more observations can be found in the Chinese annals. From ad 600 to 1600, the Chinese records preserve some 220 sightings of comets and guest stars, while from Japan there are nearly 150, and 120 from Korea. By comparing records of transient objects, we can learn something about the statistics of the phenomena themselves.
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Notes
- 1.
ad 1600 was set as the cut-off point for after this date Jesuit influence and improved communication may have led to ‘cross-contamination’ of the records.
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. Nanjing (in Chinese).Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Leids Kerkhoven Bosscha Fonds for providing partial financial support of my travel to Townsville, Australia, to attend ICOA-6.
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Strom, R.G. (2011). Statistics of Oriental Astronomical Records: What Can They Tell Us?. In: Orchiston, W., Nakamura, T., Strom, R. (eds) Highlighting the History of Astronomy in the Asia-Pacific Region. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8161-5_4
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