An ancient book on astronomy from the 1500s sold for more than £10,000 ($12,200), as a "private international buyer" triumphed over intense competition at a U.K. auction. The Castle of Knowledge by ...

Long before modern telescopes, early astronomers mapped the heavens with math, myth, and sheer curiosity. This crossword quiz celebrates the minds who first charted the cosmos.

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. Fragments of one of the first-ever star catalogues—created ...

Researchers have discovered what is thought to be the first known map of the night sky, written over 2,000 years ago. The map was discovered by scholars studying Christian texts written on an old ...

A new analysis of the 6,000-year-old stone circle known as Rujm el-Hiri (also Gilgal Refaim) in Golan Heights suggests that it was not built to observe the heavens. When you purchase through links on ...

Long before modern observatories and spacecraft, court scribes in ancient China were quietly building one of humanity’s first datasets on the changing sky. Their terse notes on sudden daylight ...

A near-total solar eclipse occurred on June 15, 763 BCE, over northern Assyria. The eclipse was recorded in Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, within the Eponym Canon, a chronicle inscribed on clay ...

Ancient humans tracked stars to predict weather and harvest times. Babylonian astronomers used graphs to chart planet movements. Many star names and constellations originated in ancient Babylon.

In 1900 diver Elias Stadiatis, clad in a copper and brass helmet and a heavy canvas suit, emerged from the sea shaking in fear and mumbling about a “heap of dead naked people.” He was among a group of ...