Observation Error During the Period of the Joseon Dynasty

In Korean historical documents, there are a great number of the records for various astronomical events. In particular, historical documents of the Joseon dynasty also have the records containing observational data by an astronomical instrument. However, a quantitative analysis for the accuracy of observational values have never been studied, although there are some studies on the truth of the records themselves. Hence, we investigated observation errors during the period of the Joseon dynasty from the records of Joseon-Wang-Jo-Sil-Lok (the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty) and Seung-Jeong-Won-Il-Gi (Daily Records of the Royal Secretariat). We used the records of the Mars, supernova 1604, and Halley's Comet, and found that observational values before the Hideyoshi invasions in 1592 are relatively more accurate than those after then. However, because the number of cases used in this study is small, we think that more studies are needed to confirm our results. Nonetheless, we reckon our work will be of service to understand astronomical records of the Joseon dynasty.