Hipparchus of Rhodes, a working astronomer at…

Hipparchus of Rhodes, a working astronomer at least from 147 BCE, compiles the first (known) star catalog; it contains approximately eight hundred and fifty entries.

Hipparchus also develops a location system of lines on the surface of the Earth (the forerunners of latitude and longitude).

Relatively little of Hipparchus' direct work survives.

Although he writes at least fourteen books, only his commentary on the popular astronomical poem by Aratus will be preserved by later copyists.

Most of what is known about Hipparchus comes from Strabo's Geographia ("Geography"), and from Pliny the Elder's Naturalis historia ("Natural history"), both written in the first century, and from Ptolemy's Almagest, compiled in the second century, with additional references to him by the fourth-century writers Pappus of Alexandria and Theon of Alexandria in their commentaries on the Almagest.