Is ancient Chinese astronomer Shi Shen’s stellar catalogue the world’s first star log?

Two Chinese scientists believe their country’s earliest star catalogue – an astronomical list of celestial bodies known as “Shi’s Star Catalogue” – is the world’s oldest star log, dating back some 2,400 years.

Citing new evidence in a study published on April 4 in the peer-reviewed astronomy journal Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, researchers Zhao Yongheng and He Boliang from the National Astronomical Observatories, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that Shi’s Star Catalogue was created around 335BC.

That would make the stellar accounts, also known as the Star Manual of Master Shi, the oldest known human records of the stars, according to the study.

In their investigation, the astronomers used image processing technology to convert ancient records into measurable celestial coordinates, which ultimately confirmed approximate years of observations in the main content of Shi’s Star Catalogue, which was followed by supplementary revisions centuries later, around AD125.

Experts believe that astronomers from both China and Greece began studying the night sky in detail at around the same time.

Until now, the Hipparchus star catalogue from Greece has been recognised as the world’s oldest, believed to have been created in the 2nd century BC. But the new research published by Zhao and He suggests that the Chinese catalogue is the oldest known human record of the stars.