Tāwhirimātea, Māori god of weather, including thunder and lightning, wind, clouds, and storms. Many educators use the tool in their classrooms to teach about the celestial sphere and how to plot and predict a variety of astronomical phenomena, including sunrises/sunsets, moonrises/moonsets, star transits, retrograde motions and much more. 28% say the country has become more religious. Religious Studies Department, Massey University, 1985, Second revised and enlarged edition. The second were azimuths, which met the almucantars at right angles. They came with two basic parts – a graduated circle and an alidade, a sighting device or pointer used to measure angles. Next came a series of plates, with each plate corresponding to a specific latitude. They were like hacked versions of their planispheric cousins, used primarily to determine the altitude of the sun or a star, which could then be used to determine latitude. The first were circles of constant altitude known as almucantars, with the horizon being the most important almucantar. At the same time, though, many skeptics have persistently questioned the existence of such a being, and beliefs about the attributes of God have exhibited wide variation, with such variations often being so deeply held that wars have been fought to advance one sort of belief over another.

All early astrolabes were of the planispheric sort until seafaring folks saw how useful the instruments could be. By about the 15th century, maritime astrolabes began appearing. By the 11th century, the devices began appearing in Muslim Spain. This move, called the hijara marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar. After a succession of military coups, a constitutional republic was established in 1991. In Burkina Faso the Arabist and Islamist movement is viewed a counter-culture to the European style of modernity, and also a way of integrating the disparate ethnic groups which make up the Muslim population of the country. This movement led to resurgence of Persian national identity. He chose to take the opportunity to speak about his experiences during the Lawyers Movement in Pakistan, as well as on the broader topic of the role of religion, specifically Islam, in jurisprudence and society. On the next few pages, we’ll explore both the art and science – as well as the rise and fall – of astrolabes.

From there, it was hop, skip and a jump into Christian Europe, where astrolabes helped astronomers – and even gifted poets like Chaucer – bring order and stability to the night sky. This was necessary because an observer located at the equator saw a different section of the night sky compared to an observer, say, at mid-latitude. They also watched the stars with great interest, arranging them into pictures – constellations – as a way to bring order to the mad chaos of the night sky. The rete was marked with a number of stars and several important constellations. As it rotated around a central pin (the north celestial pole), the rete showed the daily motion of the celestial sphere. The rete (sounds like “treaty”) rested on top of the plates. Modern retes are often made of transparent plastic so you can see through them to the plates below. With such supreme power and with such a lack of oversight (either by writing closed-source code or otherwise), even the most noble programmer can be easily seduced into flexing their Will-to-Power to do the absurd. Even strict creationists tend to have very favorable views on science. The map, which preserved the angular relationships among the stars, may have been the first example of stereographic projection.

Hipparchus kept meticulous records of 850 stars, an activity that led to the discovery of precession (wobbling of Earth on its axis) and to a unique way of describing a star’s position. And that blueprint would travel all the way to the medieval Islamic world. OK, so Theon didn’t actually build an astrolabe, but historians think he did provide a full blueprint. The first authoritative account of what would become the modern, much-easier-to-use astrolabe came from Theon of Alexandria in 390 A.D. The mater (Latin for “mother”) served as the base of an astrolabe. For the astrolabe to work properly, it needed a plate specific to a given latitude. They were also more idiosyncratic because their operation depended on the user’s latitude. Like a traditional globe, the celestial sphere possessed north and south poles, an equator and coordinates similar to latitude and longitude. Balut typically tastes like a rich, creamy yolk mixed with a rich chicken or duck soup. Balut is most commonly made from duck eggs and embryos.