Astronomy: Astronomical observations from China constitute the longest continuous sequence from any civilisation and include records of sunspots (112 records from 364 BC), supernovas (1054), lunar and solar eclipses. By the 12th century, they could reasonably accurately make predictions of eclipses, but the knowledge of this was lost during the Ming dynasty, so that the Jesuit Matteo Ricci gained much favour in 1601 by his predictions. By 635 Chinese astronomers had observed that the tails of comets always point away from the sun. COUNT 5
QSN1 What observations in astronomy did China record? ANS1 sunspots QSN2 What kind of predictions were made during the 12th century? ANS2 eclipses QSN3 Who made predictions in 1601? ANS3 Jesuit Matteo Ricci QSN4 What year did Chinese astronomers start to observe comets? ANS4 635 QSN5 How many records of sunspots are there? ANS5 112