In ancient times, in order to meet the needs of navigation and positioning, some stars were connected and named this connection. The name of this connection is constellation. Later, the ancients saw the sun's trajectory in the sky (rising in the east and setting in the west) passing through the twelve constellations, so they gave these constellations a mysterious meaning, and there were twelve constellations in the astrological sense. Details are as follows:
The twelve constellations, namely the zodiac, are astrological regions that describe the sun passing through the zodiac on the celestial sphere, including Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. Although Ophiuchus also passes through the zodiac, it is not in the zodiac used in astrology.
Astrology's definition of the ecliptic only refers to the twelve equally divided regions of the ecliptic, which is different from astronomy. After the International Astronomical Union standardized the constellation boundary in 1928, there were 13 constellations on the ecliptic. Because of precession, the zodiac in 2 1 century no longer conforms to astrology.
Extended information: the division and views of several major civilizations on constellations
Mesopotamian astrologers divided the starry sky into several regions for the convenience of studying and observing many stars in the sky, and each region was a constellation. It's hard to say clearly when humans began to have the concept of constellation. This astronomical knowledge was known long before there was a historical record. The name of the constellation probably comes from the sailors who sailed early.
The origin of constellations may be completely different between civilizations in different regions, but with the expansion and mutual influence of civilizations, the culture of constellations also includes the process of integration.
2. The West
In 270 BC, the Greek poet Aratus wrote Things, in which 47 constellations were mentioned. According to the star regions recorded in Celestial Bodies, due to precession, the Antarctic in the period described in the book is not consistent with the current Antarctic, so it can be inferred that the starry sky recorded in the book is before 2000 BC; At the same time, the blank area of the starry sky record indicates that the observer should be near 35 to 36 north latitude.
Some people think that the practice of dividing the starry sky into constellations originated from Babylon and Sumer in Mesopotamia, and the constellations of Greece and Egypt may have been introduced from this area.
In the Book of Job, several constellations such as Bear and Orion are mentioned. In the12nd century BC, the land landmarks built in the era of Nebuchadnezzar I were engraved with designs of Sagittarius, Scorpio and Ophiuchus.
The ancient Greek poets Homer and hesiod also mentioned Ursa major, Orion and the Pleiades (the Pleiades was considered as an independent constellation at that time, not a part of Taurus), and at the same time, Babylon had recorded the zodiac in cuneiform.
In the second century, Ptolemy recorded 1022 stars in 48 constellations in his astronomical masterpiece, which is also the embryonic form of modern constellations. After that, many astronomers filled the Ptolemaic constellation with new constellations. Valle in 1603, Jahannes Hewelius in 1690, and Llakaj in 1752 have named the constellations in Nantian in two centuries.
2. China
There are some names of 28 homestays in the early Zhou Dynasty in Zhou Li, which was written in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Records of twenty-eight huts and four elephants were first found in historical records. There are many differences in academic circles about the origin, time and place of Twenty-eight Nights. Traditionally, China's twenty-eight lodging system can only be traced back to the eighth and sixth centuries BC.
1978, archaeologists unearthed the lacquer box cover engraved with the image of Twenty-eight Hostels in the tomb of Zeng Houyi of the Warring States Period in Suizhou, Hubei Province, which is the earliest physical specimen of Twenty-eight Hostels discovered so far.
In ancient China, Sanyuan, which is near the North Pole, was defined as a middle official, while Erbasu was actually subdivided from four elephants. The star area south of Erbasu was called a foreign official, that is, "middle official+four elephants+foreign officials", which was just one of the many ways to divide the star areas in ancient China.
In addition, there are many ways to divide the stars into seven areas, such as "five beasts+middle officials+foreign officials" and "nine wild+middle officials+foreign officials" which are divided into 1 1 area, but the division method of "middle officials+four elephants" is widely spread.
In ancient China, the sky was divided by star officials. The earliest records of star officials are Sima Qian's Historical Records and Tian Guan Shu, among which 9 1 has more than 500 star officials. By the Sui Dynasty, there were 283 star officials recorded in Song of Heaven, belonging to one of the three yuan or twenty-eight lodging houses.
Sanyuan refers to the three regions surrounding the Arctic sky, namely Ziweiyuan, Taiweiyuan and Tianshiyuan, which are divided into four elephants around the ecliptic and the celestial equator, and each elephant is subdivided into seven regions of the four elephants, collectively called 28 nights.
In ancient China, the lunar calendar was used as a calendar year. Because the moon rotates once around the earth on the 28th of every month, it is called a "shelter" or "shed" when it passes through an area every day. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, due to the influence of western learning spreading to the east, Xu Guangqi compiled the almanac of Chongzhen with reference to the data of European astronomy, adding 23 star officials near Invivo.
There are different opinions about the order in which the starry sky is divided into three walls, four images and twenty-eight nights. Gaul, an astronomer in the Republic of China, thought in his book Notes on Astrology that three walls appeared first, then four elephants, and finally appeared for 28 nights.
Chen Zungui, an astronomer who was the first curator of the Beijing Planetarium, thinks in his works that these four images appeared earlier, and then they were divided into twenty-eight lodges, with Sanyuan being the last one, and points out that the name of Sanyuan only appeared in the Song of Dan Deng Tian in the Sui Dynasty, and the shape of Sanyuan and Twenty-eight lodges was also formed and used here.
3. India
Twenty-eight nights of Indians (? (Nakshatra, meaning "Moon Station") is very similar to twenty-eight hotels in China, and scholars believe that they both come from the same source.
Pipaxing, Madler, schlegel, Zhu Kezhen, Xia Nai, Xincheng Xinzang and others claimed that 28 hotels originated in China. Weber, John Chen, Ginzel, King Smir and Edkin advocated the origin of India.
Different from the division of China's Twenty-eight Lodgings, Indian Twenty-eight Lodgings replaced Niu Lodging in China's Twenty-eight Lodgings with Weaver Maid, and replaced female Lodging in China's Twenty-eight Lodgings with River Drum (Cowherd).
Both of them started with Kakuk (,Chitrā), but the starting place of 28 hotels in India was changed to Pleiades (,Krittikā). According to ancient Indian classics, rooms and walls were once combined into one night and became twenty-seven nights, or there were twenty-seven nights made by subtracting the Weaver Girl, which is consistent with China. The full name of the Twenty-Seven Hostel first appeared in Brahma's Partridge Book.
4. The Arab world
After the 9th century, Ptolemy constellation spread to the Arab world. Ptolemy's masterpiece Astronomy was translated into Arabic, which was called "the great theory". On the basis of this book, Al Su Fei wrote The Stars, which is one of the three masterpieces of Islamic observational astronomy. )。 Most of the star names used around the world now come from Arabic.
References:
Baidu Encyclopedia: Twelve Constellations
References:
Baidu encyclopedia: constellation