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January 18, 2005
stars hidden in plain sight
Who says that beauty can't be truth, that art can't be science? It seems that a scientist at LSU has found the long-lost sky catalog of Hipparchus in plain sight. Specifically, it's on a statue called the Famese Atlas, a depiction of Atlas holding up the sky. Apparently the sculptor used one of Hipparchus' catalogs to lay out the constellations on the 7-foot statue's globe, with enough accuracy that the sky depicted can be dated to within 50 years.
Posted by Chris at January 18, 2005 09:27 AM