古代天象记录与应用历史天文学

Ancient Astronomical Observation and Applied Historical Astronomy

应用历史天文学是一门应用古代天象记录来研究现代天文学问题的学科。本文介绍古代天象记录的存世情况和各地区记录的特征,说明应用它们在超新星、地球自转、太阳系天体轨道运动和太阳活动等研究领域取得的成就。

The ancients left us a great deal of astronomical records which were maily made for astrology. They include eclipses,occultations,comets,new stars,sunspots,meteors, conjunctions among the moon,planets and stars-and so on. Many historical records came from west Asia and Erope,but Chinese offered the longest and the most comprehensive series. The purpose of Applied Historical Astronomy is to employ these treasures for modern scientific research and its achievements can be divided into four fields. 1. Historical records of new stars give rare chances to study the process of burst and expansion of novas and supernovas. This is very important for the investigation of evolution of the universe.2.From eclipses records and other records,the variation of velocity of the Earth's rotation can be obtained.This is valuable to survey the structure and mechanics of the Earth. 3. Long terms of orbital elements of celestial bodies in solar system, e.g·Halley's comet and planets,can be verified and improved by these ancient records.4.Sunspots and auroras records offer information to study the regulation of solar activety in the past thousands of years. Modern astronomical observations are gaining accurate results, but they can never replace the ancient records in some fields