Ulugh Beg observatory and star catalogue
Observatorio de Ulugh Beg y catálogo estelar
- Date
- 1420-1437 · confidence high
- Place
- Samarkand, Uzbekistan
- Credited to
- Ulugh Beg, al-Kashi and Qadi Zada al-Rumi
- People
- 👤 Ghiyath al-Din Jamshid Mas'ud al-Kashi1380–1429👤 Mūsā Ibn-Muḥammad Qāḍī-zāda1364–1437👤 Ulugh Beg1394–1449
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What it is
Observatory with a meridian sextant of about 40 m radius cut into the rock, from which came the Zij-i Sultani with 1,018 stars and a sidereal year of 365 d 6 h 10 min. It was the first complete star catalogue with new observations since Hipparchus.
The observatory was destroyed after the assassination of Ulugh Beg (1449); its remains were excavated in 1908 (V. Vyatkin).
What it led to
- star catalogue reprinted in Oxford (1665)
- very precise values of the obliquity of the ecliptic and the year
- tradition of observatories in India (Jai Singh)