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Gan De
Warring States astronomer called Master Gan in the Shiji, whose surviving notes on Jupiter have been read as a naked-eye sighting of one of its moons
On an observatory terrace at night, a large bronze armillary sphere stands on a stone base while two people stand with their backs turned facing the view; stars are joined into constellation lines overhead, and a sundial and tiered dripping water vessels stand at the right.
Also known as Gan Gong
- Roles
- Scientist
Gan De was a Warring States astronomer and astrologer whom the treatise on the heavens in the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) calls Master Gan and lists as the transmitter of celestial lore in Qi. Pei Yin's commentary quotes Xu Guang as saying that his name was De and that he came from Lu, while Zhang Shoujie's commentary cites a Liang-dynasty catalogue calling him a man of Chu and the author of eight scrolls on astronomy and astrology. His Star Manual of Master Gan is lost, but fragments survive in the Tang compendium Kaiyuan zhanjing. One of them, on Jupiter, mentions a small reddish star attached to its side, and in 1981 the historian of astronomy Xi Zezong argued that this records a naked-eye sighting of a Jovian moon. From the Song onward his work and Shi Shen's were known together as the Gan-Shi Star Manual.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; mid–Warring States