An analysis of the stars recorded in the Seong-Gyeong 星鏡

  • Published : 2017.10.10

Abstract

In the middle of $19^{th}$ century, the Seong Gyeong 星鏡, which is a Korean historical astronomy book, was published by Nam Byeong-Gil(1820-1869). In this study, identification was conducted by considering the star catalogue recorded in the Yixiang Kaocheng Xubian 儀象考成續編. The Seong Gyeong 星鏡 recorded the information of 1,449 stars, and identified 1,413 stars among 1,449 stars, which is a rate of 97.5%. The positional error (angular distance) of the identified stars is $5.33{\pm}0.34$ arc-min. It was also confirmed that the magnitudes of the recorded stars have correlations with those of modern times. It was determined that the position error of the stars became larger as the magnitude of the stars became dimmer, or as the position of the stars came closer to the pole. Based on these analyses, the Seong Gyeong 星鏡 was confirmed that it is a result of correcting the precession of the selected stars from star catalogue of Yixiang Kaocheng Xubian 儀象考成續編.

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