TEMPORARY STARS. It>'/ 



{g) March, 393. This star was also in Scorpio^ in the tail of that 

 coustellation. l^rom the Records of Ma-tuau-lin. 



(/i) The precise year (827) is doubtful. It may witt more certainty 

 fee assigned to the first half of the ninth centuiy, when in the reign of 

 Calif Al-Mamun, the two famous Arabian astronomers, Haly and Gia- 

 far Ben Mohammed Albumazar, observed at Babylon a new star, whose 

 light, according to their report, " equaled that of the moon in her quar- 

 ters." This natural phenomenon likewise occurred in Scorpio. The 

 star disappeared after a period of four months. 



(i) The appearance of this star (which is said to have shone forth in 

 tlie year 945, under Otho the Great), like that of 1264, is vouched for 

 iolely by the testimony of the Bohemian astronomer Cypinanus Leovi- 

 tius, who asserts that he derived his statements concerning it from a 

 manuscript chronicle. He also calls attention to the fact that these two 

 phenomena (that in 945 and that in 12G4) took place between the con- 

 stellations of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, close to the Milky Way, and near 

 the spot where Tycho Brahe's star appeared in 1572. Tycho Brahe 

 {Progym.y p. 331 and 709) defends the credibility of Cyprianus Leovi- 

 tius against the attacks of Pontauus and Camerarius, who conjectured 

 that the statements arose from a confusion of new stars with long-tailed 

 comets. 



{k) According to the statement of Hepidannus, the monk of St. Gall 

 (who died A.D. 1088, whose annals extend from the year A.D, 709 to 

 1044), a new star of unusual magnitude, and of a brilUancy that dazzled 

 the eye (oculos verberans), was, for three months, from the end of May 

 in the year 1012, to be seen in the south, in the constellation of Aries. 

 In a most singular manner it appeared to vary in size, and occasionally 

 it could not be seen at all. " Nova stella apparuit insolitoe magnitudinis, 

 aspectu fulgurans et oculos verberans non sine teiTore. Qute mirum in 

 modum aliquando contractior, aliquando diffasior, etiam extinguebatur 

 interdum. Visa est autem per tres menses in intimis finibus Austri, ul- 

 ti'a omnia signa quie videntur in coelo." (See Hepidanni, Annales bre- 

 ves, in Duchesne, HlstoricE Francorum Scriptores, t. iii., 1641, p. 477. 

 Compare also Schnuirer, Chronik der Seuchen, th. i., s. 201.) To the 

 manuscript made use of by Duchesne and Goldast, which assigns the 

 phenomenon to the year 1012, modern historical criticism has, howev- 

 er, preferred another manuscript, which, as compared with the former, 

 exhibits many deviations in the dates, throwing them six years back. 

 Thus it places the appearance of this star in 1006. (See Annales San.' 

 gallenses majorcs, in Veriz, Momiment a Germanics kisiorica Scnptomm, 

 t. i., 1826, p. 81.) Even the authenticity of the writings of Hepidannus 

 has been called into question by modern critics. The singular phenom- 

 enon of variability has been termed by Chladni tiie conflagration and 

 extinction of a fixed star. Hind {Notices of the Astron. Soc, vol. viii., 

 1848, p. 156) conjectures that this star of Hepidannus is identical with 

 a new star, which is recorded in Ma-tuan-lin, as having been seen in 

 China, in February, 1011, between a and ^ of Sagittarius. But in thai 

 case thex'e must be an error in Ma-tuan-lin, not only in the statement of 

 the year, but also of the constellation in which the star appeared. 



(/) Toward the end of July, 1203, in the tail of Scorpio. According 

 to the Chinese Record, this new star was "of a bluish-white color, 

 without luminous vapor, and resembled Saturn." ( Edouard Biot, in the 

 Connaissance des Temps pour 1846, p. 68.) 



(wi) Another Chinese observation, from Ma-tuan-lin, whose astronom- 

 ical records, containing an accurate account of the positions '^f comets 



