Archaeoastronomy in East Asia: Historical Observational Records ...

Even greater attention was paid to the appearance of comets in the Han Dynasty (206 BC–AD 220), mainly because they were considered inauspicious. In addition to written records, detailed illustrations of different kinds of comets have been preserved that also display an artistic sensibility. Besides the famous cometary atlas on the 2nd century BC silk manuscript from Mawangdui, among other images inscribed on stone and wood are also to be found lively renderings of comets. Recently, in a work titled “Tianyuan yuli xiangyi fu,” authored by the Ming Emperor Renzong (Zhu Gaochi; r. 1425–1434), the authors discovered a color illustration of a so-called heavenly lance (tianqiang). According to a gloss by the early astronomer Gan De (4th c. BC), “a lance star is basically a broom star, with a pointed tip 2 to 3 zhang long,” so that the heavenly lance in the illustration is no doubt intended to represent a comet. This book was written in the first year of the Hongxi reign period (AD 1425), perhaps making this the world’s earliest color depiction of a comet (Plate 1).

Ancient Korean and Japanese books, besides containing a great number of cometary records, also preserve numerous invaluable illustrations of cometary observations. Figure 1.2 is an ancient Korean sketch of a cometary observation in which a comet has just appeared between the two lunar mansions Yi [LM 27] and Zhen [LM 28]. The tail of the comet has split into several branches and looks just like the sweep of a broom suspended in the night sky.

In recent times, numerous, even more detailed, hand-drawn illustrations have been preserved in Japan. As shown in figure 1.3, from the second 10-day week of the 1st month of the 2nd year of the Kampō reign period (1742) through the 7th day of the 2nd month, the movements of a comet near the North Pole are realistically rendered with a writing brush.