Dunhuang Star Chart

Before this map, much of the star information mentioned in historical Chinese texts had been questioned.

[2] The map provides a graphical verification of the star observations, and are part of a series of pictures on one of the Dunhuang manuscripts.

The scroll with the star chart was found amongst those documents by Aurel Stein when he visited and examined the content of the cave in 1907.

[5] One of the first public mentionings of this script in Western studies was from Joseph Needham's 1959 version of the book Science and Civilisation in China.

The groups are presented in three colors representing the "Three Schools of Astronomical tradition".

Detail of the Star Map from the Tang dynasty showing the North Polar region ( British Library Or.8210/S.3326 ). This map was made around the year 700, [ 1 ] around the reign of Emperor Zhongzong of Tang (705-710). Constellations of the three schools were distinguished with different colors: white, black and yellow for stars of Wu Xian , Gan De and Shi Shen respectively. The whole set of star maps contained 1,300 stars