Talk:Gan De

Galilean moons?
It's theoretically possible to see them without optical aid, but in practice Jupiter's glare makes it very difficult or impossible. Some people have reportedly seen Ganymede and Callisto by hiding Jupiter behind wires, trees etc.

However there seems to be another possible identification of the mysterious star- Uranus. In 366BC it underwent a series of close conjunctions with Jupiter, one in February (when Mars was involved as well, the three were less than a degree apart), another in late April/early May (about 40-45'), again in September (very close, 15' or so). Uranus is just within naked eye visibility, and when close to Jupiter but further than any moon ever gets would have appeared like a very faint "star". These conjunctions all took place in a fairly barren area of sky on the Ophiuchus/Sagittarius border. Walshie79 (talk) 15:36, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

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Anachronism
The section about the books has an anachronism. It mentions a book that "records the motion of Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and other planets in their orbits between 246 BC and 177 BC" and attributes it to Gan De, but the opening paragraph of the article says the astronomer lived in the 4th century BCE, and his Jupiter observation is dated 365 BC, which means he would have been long dead by 246 BCE, let alone 177 BCE! CielProfond (talk) 17:09, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
 * It is possible that the Mawangdui Silk Texts refer to Gan De and Shi Shen and that they also mention observations made by another. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.178.1.178 (talk) 11:52, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Observations made over 69 years might have been made by dozens of different observers.