Mining Ancient Texts Reveals Clues to Space Weather of Yore
By Tim Hornyak 24 May 2017
Scientists use sophisticated instruments such as satellites to monitor space weather today, but watchers of the skies have been observing phenomena such as auroras for millennia. Japanese researchers recently identified what may be the earliest known, datable sketch of an aurora and say it can shed light on solar activity more than 1000 years ago.
The crude marginalia were found in the Zūqnīn Chronicle, a history of events from Creation to the late 8th century that is preserved in the Vatican Apostolic Library. Composed in 775 and 776 CE, the manuscript is written in a dialect of Aramaic and attributed to a monk dubbed Joshua the Stylite, who lived in the monastery of Zūqnīn in what is now eastern Turkey. The manuscript yielded a total of 10 drawings of heavenly phenomena, including a sketch of horizontal bands from 771/772 CE. The chronicle describes it thus:
https://eos.org/articles/mining-ancient-texts-reveals-clues-to-space-weather-of-yore
