Beijing Ancient Observatory
On the grounds of the Beijing Ancient Observatory with a bronze bust of the astronomer and mathematician Guo Shoujing in the foreground.
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| Coordinates | 39°54′22″N 116°25′41″E / 39.9061°N 116.4281°ECoordinates: 39°54′22″N 116°25′41″E / 39.9061°N 116.4281°E |
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| Website | www |
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The Beijing Ancient Observatory (simplified Chinese: 北京古观象台; traditional Chinese: 北京古觀象台; pinyin: Běijīng Gǔ Guānxiàngtái) is a pretelescopic observatory located in Beijing, China. The observatory was built in 1442 during the Ming dynasty, and expanded during the Qing. It received major reorganization and many new, more accurate instruments from Europeans (Jesuits) in 1644.
As one of the oldest observatories in the world, the Beijing Ancient Observatory grounds cover an area of 10,000 square meters. The observatory itself is located on a 40 by 40 wide meter on a 15 meter tall brick tower, an extant portion of the old Ming dynasty era city wall that once encircled Beijing. Several of the bronze astronomical instruments are on the platform, and other armillary spheres, sundials, and other instruments are located nearby at ground level. It is operated as a museum in affiliation with the Beijing Planetarium.
It was said that in 1227, the Jin dynasty transferred the ancient astronomical instruments from Kaifeng to the first observatory in Beijing. In 1279, the succeeding Mongols under Kublai Khan built a new observatory just north of the current observatory. Kublai Khan made his chief adviser of hydraulics, mathematics and astronomy, Guo Shoujing, director of the observatory in 1283 after the death of Guo's friend and predecessor Zhang Wenqian. After the Mongols, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding Ming Emperor, transferred the instruments from Beijing to Nanjing. When the Yongle Emperor came to power, he had craftsmen make copies of the instruments in Nanjing and sent them to the Beijing observatory.
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