<p>The Sun, in its apparent motion along the ecliptic through the year, passes over the background of distant stars. However, given that we can't observe those stars due to the brightness of the Sun, how were the ancient astronomers able to identify which star the Sun appears to be over or near to?</p>

<p>The only possible explanation I can come up with is that they observed the morning sky just before dawn (while stars were still visible) or the night sky just after sunset and so they couldn't really identify the precise location of the Sun on the celestial sphere but they could describe its position in rather general terms, which is why they might say, e.g. that the Sun is in the constellation of the Capricorn. Am I missing something?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-05-16T10:55:11.037Z
Early astronomers knew the motions of the stars and the Sun quite precisely, so it was a simple matter of extrapolation to know which stars the sun was currently in front of. There was no need to directly observe the stars behind the Sun.
Ags1
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-05-17T07:58:37.590Z
You might do better in the History of Science stack exchange for this question.  I suspect the answer is quite involved, and will cover detail of how star positions were measured, and the construction of star atlases as pre-requisites.
Dr Chuck
<ecliptic>
location of the sun on the celestial sphere
Marcus Junius Brutus
# location of the sun on the celestial sphere

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-05-15)

The Sun, in its apparent motion along the ecliptic through the year, passes over the background of distant stars. However, given that we can't observe those stars due to the brightness of the Sun, how were the ancient astronomers able to identify which star the Sun appears to be over or near to?

The only possible explanation I can come up with is that they observed the morning sky just before dawn (while stars were still visible) or the night sky just after sunset and so they couldn't really identify the precise location of the Sun on the celestial sphere but they could describe its position in rather general terms, which is why they might say, e.g. that the Sun is in the constellation of the Capricorn. Am I missing something?

**Tags:** ecliptic

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Early astronomers knew the motions of the stars and the Sun quite precisely, so it was a simple matter of extrapolation to know which stars the sun was currently in front of. There was no need to directly observe the stars behind the Sun.  
> **username_2**: You might do better in the History of Science stack exchange for this question.  I suspect the answer is quite involved, and will cover detail of how star positions were measured, and the construction of star atlases as pre-requisites.  

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