Coma long with us – we’ve a hairy problem to untangle.
To fill out his map of the sky, Ptolemy’s list includes some stars which the Greeks didn’t count as part of any constellation – ‘unfigured’ stars. These stars are tucked into Ptolemy’s accounting as ‘stars near the constellation NNNN’. Not all constellations have associated unfigured stars.
The catalogue lists coordinates and magnitudes for eight ‘unfigured stars around Leo’ – one of 4th magnitude, four of 5th, and three more cited as ‘faint’.
These three faint ones are boundary markers for a ‘nebulous mass’ called Coma – the Hair.
Though the positions of eight stars are listed, Ptolemy’s checksum accounting lists ‘5 stars plus Coma’.
Curious, that.
Ptolemy’s final accounting of all of the sky is ‘1022 stars plus Coma’.
That’s to say, 1023 objects – 1022 stars, and a nebulous mass defined by 3 stars.
Put otherwise, 1025 stars.
The number of things in the sky is both 1023 and 1025 at the same time.
Hmmmmm. . . .
Perhaps this is all just coincidence.
But it seems that Ptolemy is purposefully dancing about 1024,
using Coma as an accounting device
We suspect that Ptolemy was a Pythagorean, because this seems the sort of thing a Pythagorean might have done.
Pythagoreans were into numbers and patterns, and would certainly have known of 1024.
Pythagoreans were into puzzles, and codes, and hidden meanings.
Ptolemy’s accounting suggests an embrace of duality and indeterminacy, a philosophical argument set to numbers in the key of 2♯ .
Or maybe it’s all just coincidence.
Oh – there’s one other thing.
Ptolemy double-counts the star we know as β Tau. This star is both the tip of the northern horn of the Bull, and the left foot/ankle of Auriga. He lists it under both constellations, and includes it in the checksums for both. It’s counted both as one of the stars of the northern sky, and as one of the stars of the Zodiac.
Which means that Ptolemy’s final count is actually 1021 stars, plus Coma – 1024 stars.
Discuss in the comments.
Behave yourselves.
For a view of the stars of Coma, and how they were identified see [LINK]