Stanford Scientists working to get through all of the night sky secrets through the oldest map containing the oldest recorded constellations in the world. 

Previous to Stanford Scientists getting their hands on this map, there is more history to this specific piece of parchment as displayed on Science Alert. The history of this artifact started in 2012, when Peter Williams, a student at Cambridge University,  noticed something behind the lettering of this manuscript preserved at St. Catherine’s Monastery on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. 

After the discovery of the medieval map on the night sky, Stanford Scientists got their hands on this map, and are using technology such as advanced fluorescent X-ray technology for imaging currently. 

The work these scientists are observing and uncovering is the creation from a second century B.C. mathematician, as KQED News states, “the father of astronomy”. 

Due to the production of this ancient parchment, the scientists have to be extremely careful with the procedures they use to recover this information. As shown by Mercury News, the production of this parchment consisted of labor produced by monks. The monks incorporated steps such as soaking the parchment in ingredients including lemon juice, milk, and flour to create this new surface used for writing these ancient coordinates of stars from the night sky. 

Although this may not seem difficult to recuperate, it’s harder than it looks. This is because not only is the parchment paper rich with an ancient process to make this paper, there are also different layers of elevated inks included in this informational map. This is demonstrated as Minhal Gardezi, a student at Stanford stated, “The top layer of ink used by the monks is rich in iron, while the underlying Greek text contains a strong calcium signal”. This entails an extra amount of effort to this recovery which involves scientists needing to tune the used X-ray beams in order to separate these layers of ink on the baking paper.

On Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, whilst the SLAC X-ray machine was continuously scanning the pages, a scientist by the name of Victor Gysembergh at Stanford was observing the machine emerging a description of the constellation such as Aquarius by Hipparchus. Later on, Mercury News stated that the section exposed could be a manuscript where it is counting how many stars are in the given constellation. 

Meanwhile, Stanford scientists are currently planning on this next phase, which will be using scholars from Greek to translate and fully uncover this historical lost parchment filled with coordinates and descriptions of the night sky. 

Ultimately, there is much more to come whether it’s the translating from scholars involved, and the X-ray continuously untangling the coordinates, scientists are anticipating this project to be done soon.