Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt - The Universal Astrolabe Text

The Universal Astrolabe Text

The Nova Compositio Astrolabii Particularis (found in only 4 manuscripts) describes the construction and use a universal astrolabe which could be used at a variety of latitudes without changing the plates. Unlike al-Zarqālī’s more famous universal astrolabe in which vertical halves the heavens were projected onto a plane through the poles, this one had both the northern and southern hemispheres projected onto a plane through the equator (which was also the limit of projection). There are no known surviving astrolabes based on this treatise. The use of such an astrolabe is very complicated, and since it is probable that most sophisticated users were not frequent travelers, they were more likely happier with the traditional (and simpler) stereographic planispheric astrolabe.

Read more about this topic:  Petrus Peregrinus De Maricourt

Famous quotes containing the words universal and/or text:

    The freedom to share one’s insights and judgments verbally or in writing is, just like the freedom to think, a holy and inalienable right of humanity that, as a universal human right, is above all the rights of princes.
    Carl Friedrich Bahrdt (1740–1792)

    If ever I should condescend to prose,
    I’ll write poetical commandments, which
    Shall supersede beyond all doubt all those
    That went before; in these I shall enrich
    My text with many things that no one knows,
    And carry precept to the highest pitch:
    I’ll call the work ‘Longinus o’er a Bottle,
    Or, Every Poet his own Aristotle.’
    George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)