NATS 1745 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Armillary Sphere, Astronomy In The Medieval Islamic World, Ahmad Ibn Muhammad Ibn Kathir Al-Farghani
12 Feb 2016
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Document Summary
Study of astronomy and mathematics continued within islamic culture. Brought together pre-arabic star love with knowledge of ancient greek"s mathematics. Sky used as the time keeper and navigation. Translation of greek text (incuding ptolemy"s almagest --- c. 600) Calculated positions of sun, moon, planets and predicted eclipses. Tables of longitude and latitude ---- early world map (800"s: al- farghani: late 800"s improved ptolemy"s predictions about positions of planets. Early 900"s worked on furthering ptolemy"s positions + brightness. Translated from ancient greek texts: al- khujandi: Late 900"s built huge observatory, with large sextant to measure angles in sky: al hazen. Early 1000"s contributed to optics, mathematics, astronomy. Wrote doubts on work of ptolemy: samerkand observatory 1420 -1450 sextant with 40 meter radius could measure very accurate positions. Instrument used to measure altitude of stars & planets above horizon. They could determine the direction of mecca from anywhere on earth.
