Labels:text | brass | metal | bronze | gold OCR: ARABIC ASTRONOMY BETWEEN ABOUT AD 180 and the 16th Engraved scale century, the Arabs dominated the showing altitude field of astronomy. Their cultural center was Baghdad (in modern Iraq), and it was here that Ptolemy's Almagest was translated into Arabic in the 8th century. The book was greatly extended by Al Battani (c. AD 850-929), the most famous of the Arab astronomers. Instruments such as the astrolabe - an ancient Greek invention - were developed into precision tools, and the Arabs made more accurate observations of star positions than the Greeks had managed. THE ASTROLABE The astrolabe is a two-dimensional model of the night sky used in the Middle Ages SEE to measure the position of the Sun and stars. NEXT ALSO
