The Problem of The Precise Localisation of The Residue
Three Chinese documents indicate that the guest star was located “perhaps a few inches” South-East of Tianguan. Song Shi and Song Huiyao stipulate that it “was standing guard” for the asterism, corresponding to the star ζ Tauri. The “South-East”orientation has a simple astronomical meaning, the celestial sphere having, like the Earth's globe, both north and south celestial poles, the “South-East” direction thus corresponding to a “bottom-left” location in relation to the reference object (in this case, the star ζ Tauri) when it appears at the South. However, this “South-East” direction has long left modern astronomers perplexed in the context of this event: the logical remnant of the supernova corresponding to the guest star is the Crab Nebula, but it is not situated to the southeast of ζ Tauri, rather in the opposite direction, to the northwest.
This problem is fully resolved if one simply realizes that the Chinese traditionally situated the south at the top of maps and north at the bottom, a 180 degree rotation of the European convention.
Read more about this topic: SN 1054, Nature of The Reported Event
Famous quotes containing the words problem, precise and/or residue:
“I tell you, sir, the only safeguard of order and discipline in the modern world is a standardized worker with interchangeable parts. That would solve the entire problem of management.”
—Jean Giraudoux (1882–1944)
“Once one’s up against it, the precise manner of one’s death has obviously small importance.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“Every poem of value must have a residue [of language].... It cannot be exhausted because our lives are not long enough to do so. Indeed, in the greatest poetry, the residue may seem to increase as our experience increases—that is, as we become more sensitive to the particular ignitions in its language. We return to a poem not because of its symbolic [or sociological] value, but because of the waste, or subversion, or difficulty, or consolation of its provision.”
—William Logan, U.S. educator. “Condition of the Individual Talent,” The Sewanee Review, p. 93, Winter 1994.