Scientists have discovered the earliest-known map of night sky from a monastery in Egypt in the form of parchment, according to a report in Nature. The star catalogue, lost so far, was prepared by astronomer Hipparchus. The parchment was preserved at St Catherine's monastery on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, the outlet further said. Scientists have been searching for Hipparchus' catalogue for centuries. The Greek astronomer is credited with the discovery of how Earth 'wobbles' on its axis. He is also said to be the first to calculate the motions of the Sun and Moon.
Nature quoted James Evans, a historian of astronomy at the University of Puget Sound in Washington, as saying that the find is "rare" and "remarkable". "It also illuminates a crucial moment in the birth of science, when astronomers shifted from simply describing the patterns they saw in the sky to measuring and predicting them," he further said, according to Nature.
The original manuscript belonged to the Greek Orthodox St Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula, but most of its 146 leaves, or folios, are now owned by the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC, said Nature.
Nine of these folios contained astronomical material, which were perhaps transcribed in fifth or sixth centuries.
These manuscripts were first analysed by Jamie Klair, a student of biblical scholar Peter Williams at the University of Cambridge.
In 2017, these pages were again analysed using multispectral imaging and the nine folios were revealed.
Legible coordinates of only one constellation, Corona Borealis, can be recovered from the folios, but researchers think it is likely that the entire night sky was mapped by Hipparchus at some point, said Science Alert.
