Who made the first catalogue of stars and the first map of the skies?
“George Bush in Iraq” is DEAD WRONG. The world’s first star catalogue was compiled by Shi Shen and Gan De, both Chinese astronomers in the 4th century BC of the Warring States Period. In approximately the 3rd century BC, Timocharis of Alexandria and Aristillus created the first star catalogue in the Western world. In the 2nd century, Ptolemy published a star catalogue as part of his Almagest, which listed 1,022 stars visible from Alexandria. It was the standard star catalogue in the Western and Arab worlds for over a thousand years. Ptolemy’s catalogue was based almost entirely on an earlier one by Hipparchus from the 2nd century BC.
