Mural painting by Hugo Ballin depicting astronomers through the ages. An Aztec in high office regalia is pointing to his calendar. At center, the Chinese Emperor Yao (2300 B.C.) is seated. He was the renovator of a system long established of determining the equinoxes and solstices by means of culminating stars. The Shu Chung, a collection of documents of ancient astronomers, in the time of Confucius (550 B.C.) relates the tragic fate of the official astronomers, Hsi and Ho, put to death for neglecting to perform certain rites during an eclipse of the sun. On the right sits Ulugh Beg, 1394-1449, the founder in 1420 of an observatory at Samarkand, in which he re-determined all Ptolemy's stars while the tables published by him held supremacy for two centuries. Commercial photograph by Sam Little.
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