Shi Shen - Observations

Observations

Shi is credited with positioning the 121 stars found in the preserved texts. Shen also made the earliest surviving undated record of sunspot observation, which is sometimes erroneously credited to Gan De. He assumed that these spots were eclipses that began at the center of the sun and spread outward. Although he was wrong, he recognised the spots for what they were – solar phenomena.

His works included the 8-volume Astronomy, the one-volume Celestial Map and the one-volume Star Catalogue of Shi. The latter two are now believed to be written by his school followers. Most of his works did not survive intact, but a few of his crucial writings were preserved in the Treatise on Astrology of the Kaiyuan Era.

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