A Survey of Meteoric Activity over Spain during the Eighth Fifteenth Centuries

The lack of astronomical observations from medieval and early modern Spanish sources is a constant in the records of solar eclipses, meteors, and other celestial phenomena. This may be partially explained by the absence of a documentary corpus similar to the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, for example, that scholars may use for conducting a systematic search of such records; the problems increase by the presence of four different vernacular languages in the peninsula: Castilian, Catalan, Basque, and Galician, together with some other minority languages, to which Latin and Arabic must be added for historical research purposes. Currently, scientific literature records few medieval Spanish astronomical accounts, and most of them are contained in wider Arab surveys or they come from the best-known annals and chronicles. Our article intends to fill this gap partially in the issue of meteoritic activity. We present a survey of meteors, bolides, and meteor storms observed in Spain in the eighth-fourteenth centuries. Most of them have not been previously published and come from local or minor sources, but for the sake of completeness, we have included some records already mentioned by other authors.A part of this work was supported by grant P1.1B2012-47 from Universitat Jaume I.Martínez Uso, MJ.; Marco Castillo, FJ. (2016). A Survey of Meteoric Activity over Spain during the Eighth Fifteenth Centuries. Journal for the History of Astronomy. 47:168-193. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021828616649316S1681934

Fifteenth Century Comets in Non-Astronomical Catalan Manuscripts

[EN] From the fifteenth century onwards, it was common in Western Europe to consider astrology as the best instrument to provide a link between the circumstances of life on the Earth and the disposition of the stars in the universe. The intimate relation between astronomy and astrology is reflected even in non-specialist works where the words astrònom and astròleg are used indistinctly. To this effect, the intrusion of astrology into medicine is also revealing, mainly in the countries of the Mediterranean and Western Europe, where several university chairs in both astronomy and astrology were established.Martínez Uso, MJ.; Marco Castillo, FJ. (2016). Fifteenth Century Comets in Non-Astronomical Catalan Manuscripts. Journal of Catalan Studies. (18/19):51-65. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/136514S516518/1

Occultation of Planets by the Moon in European Narrative Medieval Sources

[EN] Existing research dealing with astronomical observations from medieval Europe have extensively covered topics such as solar and lunar eclipses and sightings of comets and meteors, but no compilation of occultations of planets by the Moon has been carried out and, till now, the data have remained scattered in different publications. The main reasons for this are the small number of observations that has reached us, their limited use for calculation of parameters associated with the rotation of the Earth, and the fact that between the fifth and fifteenth centuries, the period that we consider, almost none of these observations were made scientifically, since they usually appear in narrative texts, be they chronicles or annals. Our purpose is to make a compilation of these phenomena, trying to shed light on some of the most controversial observations after examining them in their historical context. We will examine European sources, but, occasionally, we will also consider reports from other parts of the world to make comparisons, when necessary.This paper was partially supported by the UJI-B2016-18, 16I356 project. The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments that greatly contributed to improving the final version of the paper. They would also like to thank the editor for generous comments and support during the review process.Martínez Uso, MJ.; Marco Castillo, FJ. (2019). Occultation of Planets by the Moon in European Narrative Medieval Sources. Journal for the History of Astronomy. 50(2):192-220. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021828619845950S19222050

Analysis of meteoritic activity in the Vth-XVth centuries using an extended survey of European Medieval Sources

[EN] The distribution of meteors streams throughout a year from the 5th to the 15th century is investigated, based on a new compilation of meteor records in the diverse European Medieval sources. The records of meteor showers and storms in the chronicles of Korea, Japan, China and Arab have also been considered, and compare their appearance dates with those of showers obtained above, as well as with modern observations. We found that the three sets of data are in agreement with each other, the Perseids, Leonids, and Lyrids being best represented.Work of this paper was partially supported by the UJI-B2016-18, 161356 project.Martínez Uso, MJ.; Marco Castillo, FJ. (2018). Analysis of meteoritic activity in the Vth-XVth centuries using an extended survey of European Medieval Sources. Icarus. 315:20-29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2018.06.015S202931

Astronomical references in the first volume of the Dietaris de la Generalitat de Catalunya (1411-1539) and the the Dietari o llibre de Jornades de Jaume Safont (1411-1484)

In 2 08, after 13 years of preparation, the Generalitat of Catalunya finished the publication of the 10 volumes of the Dietaris de la Generalitat de Catalunya. The Dietaris, as well as a closely related source, the llibre de Jornades 1411/1484 de Jaume Safont, cover the period of 1411 to 1539. In this article, we examine astronomical references contained in these two sources, and place them in their historical context. Our main focus lies on astronomical phenomena that have not previously been published in the astronomical literature. In fact, relatively few astronomical records are accessible in Spanish medieval and early modern history and our paper intends to fill this gap partially.Dept. Matematiques, IMAC, Campus de Riu Sec, 12071 Castello. (Spain). Part of this work was supported by grant P1.1B2012-47 from Universitat Jaume I. The authors wish to thank the Generalitat de Catalunya for allowing us the reproduction of part of the artwork contained in the Dietaris de la Generalitat de Catalunya. They also wish to thank the Servei de traduccio de la universitat Jaume I de Castello for their help in translating some of the ancient expressions contained in the Dietaris, and C.H. Luthy, editor of Early Science and Medicine, for his helpful comments and efforts to improve this paper.Martínez Uso, MJ.; Marco Castillo, FJ. (2014). New Astronomical References in Two Catalonian Late Medieval Documents. Early Science and Medicine. 19(2):174-185. https://doi.org/10.1163/15733823-00192P03S17418519

Impact on the Hipparcos2-UCAC4 geometric relation from some physical properties of the stars

[EN] The aim of this paper is the study of the impact that the consideration of different physical properties as magnitude and spectral type of stars has on the geometric relations between Hipparcos2 and UCAC4. In this sense, the pairs of residuals ¿¿ ¿ and ¿¿ can be considered as functions of (¿, ¿, r) and for each fixed r, we can fit a vector field on the sphere from which to obtain its components in the VSH basis. The same can be done by grouping the stars considering their magnitudes, spectral types (or mixing them) and then studying the variations in the mentioned geometry. We must not forget that ¿¿ ¿ and ¿¿ are numerical random variables whose regression on the magnitude m, for example, can be estimated. The results will be computed taking into account r as well as the physical mentionThis work was supported by a grant UJI-B2016-18Marco, FJ.; Martínez Uso, MJ.; López, JA. (2018). Impact on the Hipparcos2-UCAC4 geometric relation from some physical properties of the stars. Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union. 12(S330):237-238. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743921317006457S23723812S330Marco F. J. , Martínez M. J. & López J. A. 2017, Astrometry and Astrophysics in the Gaia Sky, In Press

A 3D-Study of the residual vector field

[EN] One of the important challenges that Gaia imposes on the Astrometric Catalogs, is a careful study in everything affected by parallax. A particularly important case is the necessary linkage Gaia - HCRF - ICRF2, which require methods of analysis that are accurate enough so that the provided results are at the same precision level as the work data.This work was supported by a grant UJI-B2016-18Marco, FJ.; Martínez Uso, MJ.; López, JA. (2018). A 3D-Study of the residual vector field. Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union. 12(S330):235-236. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743921317006536S23523612S33

OSCURAUIT SOL: Stone Engravings and Other Contemporary Spanish Records for the a.d. 1239 and a.d. 1354 Eclipses and Their Astronomical Implications

The eclipse of a.d. 1239 June 3 was observed at no less than 10 sites in Europe, but the one from a.d. 1354 September 17 was observed only from two European sites. In this paper, we present several new references for the a.d. 1239 and a.d. 1354 solar eclipses, most of them from unpublished Spanish documents. In particular, we study three records engraved on stones whose existence was not known until recently. Such records are very rare in the rest of Europe. The study of ancient eclipses has proven to be useful for obtaining some astronomical data of interest to modern astronomy. In particular, the analysis of these eclipses may be useful for determining a range of T for the epochs.Part of this work was supported by a grant AICO/2015/037 from Generalitat Valenciana.Martínez Uso, MJ.; Marco Castillo, FJ.; Ibañez, L. (2016). OSCURAUIT SOL: Stone Engravings and Other Contemporary Spanish Records for the a.d. 1239 and a.d. 1354 Eclipses and Their Astronomical Implications. Journal for the History of Astronomy. 47:61-75. doi:10.1177/0021828615620985S61754