The Song of Urania

Aboriginal Australian societies are believed to be among the oldest continuous cultures on the planet. Some of their oral traditions appear to preserve a cultural memory of celestial events from multiple millennia in the past. Aboriginal Australians were also keen observers of the heavens and recognized phenomena both common and rare, from the solstices, to solar eclipses, to auroral sounds, and stellar variability.

In his second attempt, Matteo Ricci was able to gain access to the Forbidden City. Over the next century, the Jesuits came to surprising influence in China through their knowledge of European astronomy, though this journey was not without its perils.

After the fall of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty drove the few small Nestorian Christian communities in China underground and largely closed China off to foreigners. Only in the 16th century with the arrival of Portuguese traders did contacts with the West begin to be revived. The newly founded Jesuit order organized a mission to China led by Matteo Ricci. After finding his efforts at establishing a presence in the country stymied by the government, Ricci discovered that the key to securing a permanent Jesuit presence in China was his knowledge of Western astronomy.

After Wang Mang had usurped the Imperial throne, a disastrous series of reforms led to the collapse of his dynasty. The reestablishment of the Han Dynasty called for yet another calendar reform. About a millennium later, a group of officials, including the astronomer Shen Kuo, instigated a treacherous period in court politics by pressing for a radical set of reforms called the New Policies.

After Wang Mang deposed the Han Dynasty and instituted his new Xin Dynasty, he needed to promulgate a new calendar to mark the occasion. One of his court astronomers, Liu Xin, developed a new calendar that integrated the lunar and solar cycles with the planetary cycles and imbued it with numerological significance. We then talk about how Huan Tan, another astronomer of the era, would have gone about measuring the lunar mansions.

We learn about the political events and omens that led to the calendar reform of 104 BC.

We turn to the ways that the Chinese Emperor's astronomers predicted and interpreted eclipses, as well as the so-called "guest stars" that they occasionally reported observing in the skies. Then we discuss the role of the planets, particularly Jupiter. Towards the end we hear a few examples of astronomy in Chinese folklore.

This month we turn to the astronomy of China in the early Imperial Era. We look at the way that the Emperor's astronomers were organized within the imperial bureaucracy and then walk through the three significant cosmological theories of the era.

We start to explore the relationship between the heavens and the Earth in Ancient China, along with the role of astronomers. One of the most important concepts in Chinese political thought to emerge from this was the Mandate of Heaven. Finally, we look at the oldest record of Chinese astronomy, the story of the astronomers Xi and Ho.

In our final episode on ancient Indian astronomy, we tour the five astronomical Siddhantas, and then meet some of the astronomers whose names and works survive to us, most importantly, the great Aryabhata.