Ancient Occultation Validation Program

This note defines the separate validation track for ancient occultations.

Why It Is Separate

Ancient occultations do not belong in the same oracle family as modern and future occultation path geometry.

Modern and future validation can rely on:

• IOTA graze and limit path publications
• machine-readable predicted path tables
• direct path-line and boundary comparison

Ancient validation cannot.

Its highest authority is instead:

• scholarly historical-astronomy record corpora
• published reductions of those records
• site-identification and chronology scholarship

So the validation mode changes from path parity to historical event reconstruction plausibility.

Program Boundary

This program owns:

• admissibility rules for ancient occultation records
• date/time reduction doctrine
• site-identification doctrine
• star/body identity doctrine for historical naming systems
• uncertainty classification for each record
• reconstructed local-event validation against reduced historical sources

This program does not own:

• modern/future path geometry parity
• IOTA prediction-path validation
• Swiss where parity

Proposed Phases

Phase 0 — Source Survey

Identify which corpora are actually admissible for Moira validation.

Expected source classes:

• ancient Chinese occultation/appulse catalogs
• peer-reviewed historical-astronomy reductions
• site-specific observational studies with explicit chronology notes

Deliverable:

• curated source list with provenance and admissibility notes

Phase 1 — Admissibility Doctrine

Define what counts as a valid ancient validation record.

Each record must be explicit about:

• event kind
• observing site
• target identity
• dating basis
• uncertainty class
• source citation

Deliverable:

• HistoricalOccultationRecord doctrine and admission rules

Phase 2 — Reduction Doctrine

Define how records are normalized into computational inputs.

Must cover:

• calendar conversion
• night-boundary interpretation
• local time phrasing
• site geolocation
• star-name mapping
• uncertainty propagation

Deliverable:

• reduction standard for ancient occultation records

Phase 3 — Pilot Corpus

Build a small gold-standard pilot set.

Recommended size:

• 3 to 5 well-studied bright-star lunar occultations

Deliverable:

• machine-readable pilot corpus with reduction notes

Phase 4 — Validation Harness

Validate Moira by reconstructing the local event at the historical site and testing whether the reconstructed event is plausible within the stated uncertainty envelope.

Expected assertion classes:

• occultation visible vs not visible
• disappearance / reappearance plausibility
• altitude above horizon
• near-graze plausibility where appropriate
• contact-window plausibility when the source warrants it

Current Status

Status: deferred

Reason:

• Moira has the computational substrate
• Moira does not yet have the curated historical corpus and reduction doctrine

Current Active Track

The active occultation validation program remains:

• modern_future_occultation_path_validation

Primary authority:

• IOTA graze/limit publications

Secondary authority:

• Swiss where

Ancient validation should not be represented as if it were already covered by that modern/future track.