Note.
As these pages are passing through the press, a letter from Mr. Maunder appears in The Observatory for August 1913 on “The Origin of the Constellations,” and this should be consulted by anyone interested in the subject. Mr. Maunder points out that Ptolemy gives us much more precise information than Aratus regarding the southern limits of the ancient constellations, and that the changes which he says he ventured to make in their traditional forms are extremely insignificant.
Mr. Maunder further observes that the celestial equator of Aratus cannot give any clue to the origin of the constellations (as R. Brown suggested), but only to the date of the work from which Aratus copied, when some astronomer had drawn the equator through the constellations. A slight alteration of the text, Mr. Maunder says, would give a correct equator for the date b.c. 1000.
See also Mr. and Mrs. Maunder’s article in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society for March 1904.
Proctor’s “Origin of the Constellation Figures” is in his book Myths and Marvels of Astronomy.
The sky appears to us like an arch, embracing all our lives, Dante says.[5] From the dawn of intelligence man must have recognized his dependence upon the all-embracing heavens, especially the sun, without which life would be impossible. The consciousness expressed itself in many ways: in adoration of the sky, the sun, moon, and hosts of heaven; in superstitious fear which regarded events on earth as directly controlled by the heavenly bodies; in careful watching and recording of their movements for useful purposes. Thus, long before astronomy became an exact science, and was studied simply for its own sake, patient observers had laid the foundations, and were familiar with many of the movements we have been describing.
These are of great importance to primitive man. Sun, moon, and stars are invaluable as guides, especially at sea, and we know that the ancient Greek mariners used to steer their ships by observations of the Great Bear, while the Phoenicians preferred to use the Little Bear for this purpose. But the strongest and most universal incentive to careful and prolonged study of the skies is our complete dependence upon them for the measurement of time.
In the earliest period of their history, the Jews, the Greeks, and probably every other nation, divided the day simply into morning, noon, and evening, according as the sun was rising, or apparently stationary, or sinking, with regard to the horizon; and the passage of some bright stars indicated the time at night. But at a very early period the first of all astronomical instruments was invented, by which the sun’s varying height can be measured: hence the time of noon, the dates of equinoxes and solstices, and the length of the solar year can be determined. The gnomon in its simplest form is a pole set up vertically on a smooth level surface, on which its shadow as cast by the sun can be observed. The moment of shortest shadow marks the middle of the day, the shortest midday shadow marks the summer solstice, the longest the winter solstice, the equinoxes falling between. The instrument also indicates the points of the compass, for the sun is always due south in northern latitudes at midday: hence the Latin word meridies (French midi) means south as well as midday, and the Meridian in astronomy is a line which passes through the north and south points and the zenith, and is crossed by the sun at midday.