Re: Voynich Astronomical Tables in Sky & Telescope

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    > There is a good article in the November Sky & Telescope on the
    > astronomical Tables in the Voynich. It just got mine in the mail
    > so it should be on the newsstands now or very soon.

I got a copy too.  It is a nice introduction, and the color
images are just great!

Two things that struck me:

  - in the black-and-white reproductions of the Pisces diagram, 
    the lines connecting the fish to the stars did not make much sense.
    In the color image, one can see two neat lines in the basic brown
    ink connecting each fish to its star, and an irregular line in blue
    ink going from nowhere to nowhere.

    Moreover, the blue paint on the "barrels" (and on the fish fins) is
    applied extremely crudely. The coloring job in the other zodiac
    pages is just as poor

    Once again it looks like the colors are not original, and must have
    been done either by an extremely careless assistant, or by a child.

  - Moreover, even if we assume that some inks may have faded away,
    it is almost certain that the colored paints were applied to only a
    few details --- a dress here, a barrel there, an animal over there
    --- seemingly at random. So the "kid with crayons" alternative seems
    the most likely.

  - The transparent yellow colorused in stars and a few other details
    may be an exception; it seems to have been applied with care and
    aptience, especially in the astr/cosmo/zodiac sections. Even s, it
    seems that most of the zodiac nymphs have had no color applied to
    their hair. Is that impression correct?

  - The month names seem indeed to be much darker than the
    Voynichese text.
  
All the best,

--stolfi