In 2005, at a meeting of the
American Astronomical Society in
San Diego, California,
Bradley E. Schaefer, a professor of
physics at
Louisiana State University, presented a widely reported analysis concluding that the text of
Hipparchus' long lost
star catalog may have been the inspiration for the representation of the constellations on the globe, thereby reviving and expanding an earlier proposal by Georg Thiele (1898). The constellations are fairly detailed and Schaefer regards them as scientifically accurate given the period of the globe's creation, implying that it was modeled after a scholarly work. His statistical analysis concludes that the positions of these constellations are consistent with where they would have appeared in the time of Hipparchus (129 BCE) – leading to the conclusion that the statue is based on the star catalog. However, because the globe contains no actual stars, and because the circles on the globe are drawn inexactly and ambiguously by a sculptor copying the Hellenistic model rather than by a modern astronomer, the dating of the globe is still uncertain and its source or sources remain controversial; Schaefer's conclusions have been strongly contested (e.g. by Dennis Duke) most particularly on the ground that regardless of the globe's date the constellations on it show large disagreements with the only existing work by Hipparchus. ==See also==