Re: VMs: Pleiades Occultation Further Date Refinement

[KenW <ken@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

jan wrote:

Hello  Ken,
 

  

Recording the "instantaneous" position of the planets was pretty much 
what the entire science of astronomy consisted of until the 1600's.  
Brahe made a very good life for himself doing exactly that.  Ptolemy's 
'atlas' was one of the most important astronomical texts for centuries, 
though it consisted primarily of simple lists of star positions.  Well, 
you get the idea.  
    

No doubt about it - but those were the studies of planets as the MAIN purpose.
Nothing of that sort is indicated in the VM. Also, if it was meant that way, 
would it not be logical to distinguish somehow the planet in question from  the stars?

  

I don't contend that the stellar images in the VMS are catalogs I was just giving and example of what astronomy was like pre-telescope.  I think the drawings may be astrological/astronomical representations of; certain dates in some cases, certain events, or symbolically significant alignments.   The question of distinction between planets and stars brings up a question for me - did the Beinecke ever post new scans of f68r1,2 and 3?  Now that I'm looking more closely at a f68r3 I want a color version.  Never seeing a color image of f68r3, I would guess that there is some distinction between stars and planets based on the color.  (unless, of course, the theory that the colors were added later is true)

The same applies if you want to depict some particular date. 

Of course, the knowing the tag would do in both cases, but
since the cryptographers could not help, we just have to guess.
We really need badly the decoding of the tags there. By the way, could the  two-word tag near
 Pleiades actually  mean something like "seven sisters" (not enecessarily in  English :-)? 
 That would be a start .  .  .
 
Jan
 
  

The way I read it, the top label is referring to the group of stars while the lower label somehow is referencing the curved line leading to the moon.

Ken W
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