Chapter 11 The number of stars in the first section

According to statistics, there are more than 200 stars scattered in the pre-Qin works handed down to the present. Considering that none of them are astronomical monographs, it is speculated that there should be more than this number of stars named at that time.Sima Qian's "Historical Records Tianguanshu" is the earliest monograph to record the number of stars, including more than 500 stars.In the early Eastern Han Dynasty, it was written as "Hanshu Astronomical Records", and more than 200 more were added, reaching 783.The number of stars obtained by Zhang Heng, an astronomer in the Eastern Han Dynasty, greatly exceeded what was known before, a total of 2,500.It is a pity that there are not many astronomical works of Zhang Heng left, and the muddy images he created have not been preserved, so later generations only know the number of stars he observed, but not the specific names and positions of the stars.

After the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, astrology became popular. Famous astrologers include Shi Shen, Gan De and Wu Xian.These astrologers generally observe by themselves, but for the purpose of astrology, they are only interested in some stars, so none of them has fully described the starry sky.During the Three Kingdoms period, Chen Zhuo of Wu State summed up the work of Shi Shen, Gan De, and Wu Xian, and counted 1464 stars while reserving differences.This number of stars has been used until the Qing Dynasty, but there are only one or two discrepancies in rare occasions.