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Register a new userAn Arabic report about supernova SN 1006 by Ibn Sina (Avicenna)
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Authors
Ralph Neuhaeuser
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We present here an Arabic report about supernova 1006 (SN 1006) written by the famous Persian scholar Ibn Sina (Lat. Avicenna, AD 980-1037), which was not discussed in astronomical literature before. The short observational report about a new star is part of Ibn Sinas book called al-Shifa, a work about philosophy including physics, astronomy, and meteorology. We present the Arabic text and our English translation. After a detailed discussion of the dating of the observation, we show that the text specifies that the transient celestial object was stationary and/or tail-less (a star among the stars), that it remained for close to three months getting fainter and fainter until it disappeared, that it threw out sparks, i.e. it was scintillating and very bright, and that the color changed with time. The information content is consistent with the other Arabic and non-Arabic reports about SN 1006. Hence, it is quite clear that Ibn Sina refers to SN 1006 in his report, given as an example for transient celestial objects in a discussion of Aristotles Meteorology. Given the wording and the description, e.g. for the color evolution, this report is independent from other reports known so far.
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We present two Arabic texts of historic observations of supernova SN 1006 from Yemen as reported by al-Yamani and Ibn al-Dayba (14th to 16th century AD). An English translation of the report by the latter was given before (Stephenson & Green 2002), but the original Arabic text was not yet published. In addition, we present for the first time the earlier report, also from Yemen, namely by al-Yamani in its original Arabic and with our English translation. It is quite obvious that the report by Ibn al-Dayba is based on the report by al-Yamani (or a common source), but the earlier report by al-Yamani is more detailed and in better (Arabic) language. We discuss in detail the dating of these observations. The most striking difference to other reports about SN 1006 is the apparent early discovery in Yemen in the evening of 15th of Rajab of the year 396h (i.e. AD 1006 Apr 17 pm 2 on the Julian calendar), as reported by both al-Yamani and Ibn al-Dayba. i.e. about 1.5 weeks earlier than the otherwise earliest known reports. We also briefly discuss other information from the Yemeni reports on brightness, light curve, duration of visibility, location, stationarity, and color.
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