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Reading the Position: Taurus 6 Degrees 25 Minutes

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Reading the Position: Taurus 6 Degrees 25 Minutes

The atlas records this star at Taurus 6 degrees 25 minutes, projected onto the ecliptic from a position in Andromeda, a constellation that lies well north of the ecliptic and none of whose stars is ever seen among the zodiacal figures.

Precession makes that longitude a dated quantity. A fixed star advances about fifty seconds of arc a year in tropical longitude, a degree in roughly seventy two years. Taking the recorded figure for epoch 2000 and applying a uniform rate, the star entered Taurus around the middle of the sixteenth century and will not reach Gemini for another sixteen or seventeen centuries. It has been in the sign for a shorter span than most of the entries around it.

The dating is worth setting beside the name. This entry preserves an old romanisation of a Chinese asterism name, and Chinese sky-lore divided the heavens on an entirely different plan from either the Greek constellations or the zodiacal signs, using circumpolar palaces and equatorial lodges rather than a band along the ecliptic. A Chinese name attached to a tropical zodiacal longitude is therefore two systems joined by a later compiler, not a fact drawn from either.

None of that makes the number wrong. It makes it a projection twice over: a star north of the ecliptic assigned an ecliptic longitude, under a name from a tradition that did not use one.

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The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.