European historical evidence of the supernova of ad 1054 balkan medieval tombstones

Abstract

In a previous work, we establish that the acclaimed „Arabic‟ records of SN 1054 from ibn Butlan originate from Europe. Also, we reconstructed the European sky at the time of the event and find that the „new star‟ (SN 1054) was in the west while the planet Venus was on the opposite side of the sky (in the east) with the Sun sited directly between these two equally bright objects, as documented in East-Asian records. Here, we investigate the engravings on tombstones (stećci) from several necropolises in present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina (far from the influence of the Church) as a possible European „record‟ of SN 1054. Certainly, knowledge and understanding of celestial events (such as supernovae) were somewhat poor in the mid-XI century.