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China’s History with the Night Sky: Part 2 of 2

August 9, 2017

The Milky Way Maid’s Weblog says, the (ancient) Chinese focused on the constellations creating one of the earliest star maps ever found. “The Chinese are believed to have made the first observation of the legendary Halley’s comet in 240 BC.” In the West, In 1705, an astronomer named Edmond Halley discovered that the comet appears every 75 to 76 years, and the comet was named after him, not the Chinese who observed it before Christ was born.

Chinese astronomers gave distinctive names to familiar Western constellations. For example, the Big Dipper was called The Plow. The North Star was Bei Ji. Another constellation was called the Winnowing Basket.

However, the Chinese were not alone in mapping the heavens.

Ancient cultures in the West studied the skies too. The “Nebra Sky Disc”, discovered in Europe, was dated to about 1,600 BC.

National Geographic reports the Nebra Sky Disc is the oldest depiction of the night sky in history, and its a hundred years older than the oldest images found in ancient Egypt. The Nebra Sky Disc may be the first representation of the universe in human history.

In addition, China.org reports that 4,000 years ago, the oldest astronomical instrument known to man was invented. It was merely a bamboo pole planted in the ground so that the movement of the sun could be observed from the direction and length of the shadow of the pole. “From the 16th century BC to the end of the 19th century AD, almost every dynasty appointed officials charged with the sole task of observing and recording the changes in the heavens. Such observations and records have left a rich astronomical legacy. …

“While Western astronomers of the Renaissance period were still arguing in 1615 who was the first to discover sunspots, Chinese astronomers had already accumulated a large amount of records on sunspots. Now it is known that the earliest records of sunspots were made in 28 BC by Chinese astronomers during the reign of Emperor Cheng of the Western Han Dynasty.”

Return to or Start with Part 1.

Discover Wu Zetian, China’s only female emperor

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

Subscribe to my newsletter to hear about new releases and get a free copy of my award-winning, historical fiction short story “A Night at the Well of Purity”.

Leave a Comment » | astronomy, China, Chinese history, history, science | Tagged: Did the Chinese invent astronomy, How long have the Chinese studied the stars, What is the history of Chinese astronomy, What is the importance of the stars in Chinese history | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s History with the Night Sky: Part 1 of 2

August 8, 2017

For thousands of years, Chinese astronomers studied the stars and planets moving in their endless repeating paths across the night sky.

The Oracle bones from the Shang Dynasty (1766 – 1122 B.C.) recorded eclipses and as many as ninety supernovas, a star that suddenly increases greatly in brightness because of a catastrophic explosion that ejects most of its mass.

For about two thousand years, the Chinese used the constant North Star to map the location of all the other stars in the sky.

This method of mapping stars is called the equatorial system. The West would not use this method to map the heavens for almost two thousand years after the Chinese invented it.

In the early 1980s, a tomb was found at Xi Shui Po (西水坡) in Pu Yang, Henan Province where clamshells and bones were found that formed the images of the Azure Dragon, the White Tiger, and the Northern Dipper. It is believed that this tomb belonged to the Neolithic Age about 6,000 years ago.

Star names relating to Chinese astrology’s 28 Mansions of the Lunar Calendar were found on oracle bones dating back to the Wuding Period about 3,200 years ago. “Since ancient times, while classical Chinese astrology, based on the observation and movement of stars, sun, comets, moon and planets, was the exclusive privilege of the emperor, many alternative systems were consequently developed that were not based on the direct observation of the sky. Their basic principles rely mainly on numerology in association with the calendar.”

Continued in Part 2 on August 9, 2017

Discover China’s First Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, the man that unified China more than 2,000 years ago.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

Subscribe to my newsletter to hear about new releases and get a free copy of my award-winning, historical fiction short story “A Night at the Well of Purity”.

2 Comments | astronomy, China, Chinese history, science | Tagged: How long have the Chinese studied the stars, What is the history of Chinese astronomy | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Plans to Explore the Solar System

May 2, 2017

This might come as a surprise to some. China is planning to go where no human has gone before and get there second or in some cases first. After all, only a few Americans have walked on the moon and nowhere else in the solar system, and it shouldn’t be a surprise because many Chinese are into UFOs and science fiction too.

The Indian Express.com reports, “China plans to become first country to land on dark side of the moon.” China announced that it will launch a lunar probe in 2018 to achieve the world’s first soft landing on the far side of the moon to showcase its ambitious space programme.

In March 2017, China Daily reported on China’s next goal in space, to ride an asteroid. A similar program was approved by President Obama but the Malignant Narcissist in the White House Donald Trump wants to cancel those plans. After sending a probe to Mars in 2020, China plans to explore three asteroids and land on one of them to conduct scientific research, according to a Chinese asteroid research expert.

Late in 2017, China’s first space station, Tiangon-1 will be falling to Earth, but China has already launched its second space lab Tiangon-2 into orbit and plans a larger space station in 2020.

NBC News reports, “With the current U.S.-led International Space Station expected to retire in 2024, China could be the only nation left with a permanent presence in space. China is ‘on the rise and the U.S. is in very real danger of falling behind in the future,’ warned Leroy Chiao, a former NASA astronaut and veteran of four space flights, one of which included commanding the International Space Station. … China is building its own capability and their aim is clearly to become the world leader in space exploration,” Chiao told NBC News. He was the first American allowed into the Astronaut Center of China in 2006 and has visited several times since.

Popular Science.com says, “After years of investment and strategy, China is well on its way to becoming a space superpower—and maybe even a dominant one. … There are plans (in China) for heavy-lift rockets, manned space stations, and one of the world’s largest satellite-imaging and -navigation networks. Meanwhile the U.S. —particularly where human spaceflight is concerned—is hardly moving at all.”

Discover Anna May Wong, the American actress who died a thousand times.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

Subscribe to my newsletter to hear about new releases and get a free copy of my award-winning, historical fiction short story “A Night at the Well of Purity”.

Leave a Comment » | astronomy, China, science | Tagged: China plans to visit astroids, China's new space station, China's plans for Mars, China's plans for the moon, Does China have a new space station in orbit, Is China going to leave the United States behind in outer space., Is there s space race between China and the United States | Permalink
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Is China a Destination for UFOs?

November 16, 2016

Compelling historical evidence suggests that China had been visited by UFOs for thousands of years, and the visits continue to this day. If true, this helps explain China’s rush to colonize the Moon and Mars first. Business Insider reported that China plans to reach Mars by 2020 and eventually build a moon base, while Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, says he plans to put people on Mars in 2025, five years after the goal set by the Chinese.

Are the Chinese in a rush to colonize the solar system first because they have alien friends waiting for them out there?

Open Minds says, “It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many fascinating accounts of flying machines, unexplained celestial observations and close encounters with strange beings can be found quite extensively in historical and literary works from China.”

For instance, ancient Chinese texts tell of long-lived rulers from the heavens, who flew in fire-breathing dragons. I wrote about descriptions from Chinese history that sounded like UFOs in God, Ancient Astronauts and China’s Yellow Emperor.

A partner of the Huffington Post also reported UFO sightings in China, “four lantern-like objects forming a diamond shape … hovered over the city’s Shaping Park for over an hour … flights were diverted in Hangzhou, also in eastern China, after a mysterious object was seen hovering in the sky.”

In addition, there’s a Tibetan book called the Kantyua, which means “the translated word of Buddha”. It tells of flying “pearls in the sky” and of transparent spheres carrying gods to visit man.

There’s also “The Chinese Roswell” by Hartwig Hausdorf, an author who spent years in China uncovering tell-tale traces of an alien mind which may have passed that way millennia ago.

Conservative state-run newspapers and television media often report UFO sightings, and China has a bimonthly UFO magazine devoted to UFO research, The Journal of UFO Research.

Discover China’s First Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, the man that unified China more than 2,000 years ago.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the unique love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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