Carved in marble, Titan Atlas, kneeling on one knee is holding much more than a large marble globe on his shoulder. He is holding clues to the long-lost work of the ancient astronomer Hipparchus.
The statue known as the Farnese Atlas is a 7-foot tall marble work with a 65 cm in diameter globe on Titan’s one shoulder. What is more interesting than Titans well sculptured body is the globe that he carries. It is this globe which accurately records positions of 41 constellations placed on a grid of reference circles, including the equator, tropics, colures, Arctic Circle, and Antarctic Circle. The locations of these constellations are now appearing to be based on the lost first star catalog made by Hipparchus around 129 BC.
Though the catalogue has been lost in the course of time there are many reference s made to it in works of other astronomer in past.
Scientists have now confirmed that the constellations on the globe are based on the lost catalogue of Hipparchus.
"There are really very few instances where lost ancient secrets or wisdom are ever actually found," said Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University. "Here is a real case where rather well-known lost ancient wisdom has been discovered."
Schaefer says that the position of the constellations on the Titan's globe reveal the date of observations as ultimately used by the sculptor. Earlier studies of globe had indicated a time span that ranged through few centuries.
Schaefer took photographs appropriate for photogrammetry and measured the positions of 70 points in the constellation figures and converted them into RA and DEC in the globe's reference frame. A chi-square analysis then showed the date of the constellations to be 125 BC. A further uncertainty of 55 years is added to the date to take into account the time period when the astronomer might have made the observations.
The date so obtained points directly at Hipparchus as being the observer and it strongly excludes all candidates that have been proposed over the past century including Aratus at c. 275 BC, Eudoxus at c. 366 BC, the original Assyrian observer at c. 1130 BC, and Ptolemy at AD 128.
Researchers carried further investigations and compared constellation figures and symbols on the Atlas globe with Hipparchus Commentary, Aratus (and Eudoxus) Phaenomena, Eratosthenes Catasterismi, and Ptolemy's Almagest. It was found that the positions of constellations matched exactly with Hipparchus' Commentary, Aratus.
