Starry, starry night

Cover of Roving China's Heavens. [Photo provided to China Daily]

After careful examination, they found out why the constellations on the instruments were different from the traditional ones: The instruments preserved in the Beijing Ancient Observatory were largely from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the last dynasty of China, when the country's astronomy was greatly influenced by Western science as missionaries came to the country.

During the following years, Qi and Wan collaborated in collecting trustworthy ancient Chinese documents of astronomy and comparing them with the current international astronomical standard.

"What we present now is an introductory book for amateurs, but we have also developed a database of the complete Chinese star catalog with cross references to contemporary astronomy," says Qi.

The database has been uploaded to the China Virtual Observatory online platform, and anyone who is interested in traditional Chinese constellations can view it on the Internet.

Together with the database, 99 pictures of the constellations designed by Xu Gang have also been released at the symposium and incorporated into the online Virtual Observatory. Xu is an astrophile who has focused on visualizing the abstract Chinese constellations since 2007, and has completed more than 170 images of Chinese traditional constellations.

Roving China's Heavens

By: QiRuiandWanHaoyi

Publisher: Popular Science Press

Year published: 2014

Price: 56 yuan ($8)

Pages: 226