One beautiful afternoon Mary Latimer and I decided to take a short walk and visit the Beijing Ancient Observatory. The first observatory was built in 1227, but the building we visited was built in 1442. It was used by the Ming and Qing astronomers in the star-gazing reports for the emperor. Since he was considered the "Son of Heaven," the movements of the heavenly bodies were an important affair. They also helped them with sea navigation. During the end of the Qing Dynasty, somebody stole some of the instruments. It probably was the French and the Germans since they returned them after the close of World War I. I am not going to try to explain each instrument. It was a beautiful fall day, and I will just put them on and you can pretend you are taking a stroll with us. These first few pictures are taken as you come into the entrance of the observatory.
Then we climbed to the top to look at the instruments they used to track the stars and planets.
We then went down again and walked around a garden that had statues of the early astronomers. I can't tell you much about them because the information was in Chinese.
In all it was a delightful afternoon and chance to see how advanced the Chinese were in their study of the universe.
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