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Traditional Chinese astronomy has a system of dividing the celestial sphere into asterisms or constellations, known as "officials" (Chinese ''xīng guān'').〔星官 literally translates to "star official". The English translation "officials" is used in Hsing-chih T'ien. and Will Carl Rufus, ''The Soochow astronomical chart'', Ann Arbor : Univ. of Michigan Press, 1945. 〕 The Chinese asterisms are generally smaller than the constellations of Hellenistic tradition. The Song dynasty (13th-century) Suzhou planisphere shows a total of 283 asterisms, comprising a total of 1,565 individual stars. 〔 Hsing-chih T'ien. and Will Carl Rufus, ''The Soochow astronomical chart'', Ann Arbor : Univ. of Michigan Press, 1945, p. 4.〕 The asterisms are divided into four groups, the Twenty-Eight Mansions along the ecliptic, and the Three Enclosures of the northern sky. The southern sky was added as a fifth group in the late Ming Dynasty based on European star charts, comprising an additional 23 asterisms. The Three Enclosures (, ''Sān Yuán'') are centered on the North Celestial Pole and include those stars which could be seen year-round.〔Needham, J. "(Astronomy in Ancient and Medieval China )". ''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London''. Series A, ''Mathematical and Physical Sciences'', Vol. 276, No. 1257, ''The Place of Astronomy in the Ancient World'' (May 2, 1974), pp. 6782. Accessed 9 Oct 2012.〕 The Twenty-Eight Mansions (, ''Èrshíbā Xiù'') form an ecliptic coordinate system used for those stars not visible (from China) during the whole year, based on the movement of the moon over a lunar month.〔(二十八宿的形成与演变 )〕 == History == The Chinese system developed independently from the Greco-Roman system since at least the 5th century BC, although there may have been earlier mutual influence, suggested by parallels to ancient Babylonian astronomy.〔Xiaochun Sun, Jacob Kistemaker, ''The Chinese sky during the Han'', vol. 38 of Sinica Leidensia, BRILL, 1997, ISBN 978-90-04-10737-3, (p. 7f. ) and (p. 18 ), note 9. The authors, citing Needham, ''Science and Civilisation in China'' vol. 3 (1959), p. 177, speculate that both the Babylonian MUL.APIN and the cadinal star names in the ''Yáo diǎn'' suggest an ultimate origin in Sumerian astronomy of about 2300 BC (based on calculations regarding the precession of the equinoxes), or approximately the reign of Sargon of Akkad.〕 The system of twenty-eight lunar mansions is very similar (although not identical) to the Indian ''Nakshatra'' system, and it is not currently known if there was mutual influence in the history of the Chinese and Indian systems. The oldest extant Chinese star maps date to the Tang dynasty. Notable among them are the 8th-century ''Treatise on Astrology of the Kaiyuan Era'' and ''Dunhuang Star Chart. It contains collections of earlier Chinese astronomers (Shi Shen, Gan De and Wu Xian) as well as of Indian astronomy (which had reached China in the early centuries AD). Gan De was a Warring States era (5th century BC) astronomer who according to the testimony of the Dunhuang Star Chart enumerated 810 stars in 138 asterisms. The Dunhuang Star Chart itself has 1,585 stars grouped into 257 asterisms. The number of asterisms, or of stars grouped into asterisms, never became fixed, but remained in the same order of magnitude (for the purpose of comparison, the star catalogue compiled by Ptolemy in the 2nd century had 1,022 stars in 48 constellations). The 13th-century Suzhou star chart has 1,565 stars in 283 asterisms, the 14th-century Korean Cheonsang Yeolcha Bunyajido has 1,467 stars in 264 asterisms, and the celestial globe made by Flemish Jesuit Ferdinand Verbiest for the Kangxi Emperor in 1673 has 1,876 stars in 282 asterisms. The southern sky was unknown to the ancient Chinese and is consequently not included in the traditional system. With European contact in the 16th century, Xu Guangqi , an astronomer of the late Ming Dynasty, introduced another 23 asterisms based on European star charts. The "Southern Sky" (近南極星區) asterisms are now also treated as part of the traditional Chinese system. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Chinese constellations」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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