An Arabic report about supernova SN 1006 by Ibn Sina (Avicenna)

TL;DR

This paper presents the first detailed analysis of Ibn Sina's Arabic report on supernova SN 1006, revealing unique observational details that align with other historical records but are independently documented.

Contribution

It provides the first translation and detailed discussion of Ibn Sina's report, establishing it as an independent historical observation of SN 1006.

Findings

The report describes a stationary, tail-less bright star that lasted nearly three months.

It notes the star's scintillation, brightness, and color changes over time.

The observation is consistent with other reports of SN 1006, but independently documented.

Abstract

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 Sina's 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 Aristotle's "Meteorology". Given the wording and the description, e.g. for the color evolution, this report is independent from other reports known so far.