The illustrations on this page have been compiled from a variety of sources. If advised that copyright has been infringed I will immediately remove the particular illustration(s).
S: Pioneer Western Constellation Studies
41: Title page of Georg Thiele's Antike Himmelsbilder
George Thiele (1866-1917) was a German Professor of Classical Philology. His book Antike Himmelsbilder (1898) has been described as a work of amazing erudition. The early chapters deal with the origin of the constellations. The focus of the book is the constellations depicted on the Farnese Globe. He set out a detailed demonstration that the constellation positions on the globe are consistent with the time of Hipparchus. Thiele held that because the constellations on the globe are rather detailed and scientifically accurate (given the date of the creation of the Farnese Globe circa 2nd-century BCE) that this implied the globe was modeled after a scholarly work on the constellations. Thiele then set out a detailed argument that the constellations depicted on the globe followed the astronomy of Hipparchus (and is based on his fixed-star register).
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