Editing History of science (section)

====Astronomical observations====
{{main|Chinese astronomy}}
[[File:Su Song Star Map 1.JPG|thumb|left|One of the [[star map]]s from [[Su Song]]'s ''Xin Yi Xiang Fa Yao'' published in 1092, featuring a cylindrical projection similar to [[Mercator projection|Mercator]], and the corrected position of the [[pole star]] thanks to [[Shen Kuo]]'s astronomical observations.{{sfnp|Needham|1986a|p=208}}]]
Astronomical observations from China constitute the longest continuous sequence from any civilization and include records of sunspots (112 records from 364 BCE), 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 favor in 1601 by his predictions.<ref>Needham p422</ref>{{Incomplete short citation|date=December 2022}} By 635 Chinese astronomers had observed that the tails of comets always point away from the sun.

From antiquity, the Chinese used an equatorial system for describing the skies and a star map from 940 was drawn using a cylindrical ([[Mercator projection|Mercator]]) projection. The use of an [[armillary sphere]] is recorded from the 4th century BCE and a sphere permanently mounted in equatorial axis from 52 BCE. In 125 CE [[Zhang Heng]] used water power to rotate the sphere in real time. This included rings for the meridian and ecliptic. By 1270 they had incorporated the principles of the Arab [[torquetum]].

In the [[Song Empire]] (960–1279) of [[Imperial China]], Chinese [[scholar-official]]s unearthed, studied, and cataloged ancient artifacts.