Islamic Astronomy

In the West, we learn about the astronomy of the ancient Greeks, like Aristarchus, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy. Then, we learn about Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler in Renaissance Europe. Was there no astronomy in between? Of course there was! It was happening in China, in India, and in the Middle East.

In the West, we pay little attention to the pre-Copernican astronomy of these vibrant cultures. Perhaps you've wondered why we still use most of the Ancient Greek constellations, but we refer to their bright stars mostly by Arabic names. Join Galen Gisler at the Los Alamos Nature Center's planetarium as he attempts to bridge the gap between Ptolemy and Copernicus by highlighting some of the accomplishments in astronomy — and incidentally in mathematics and physics — that we owe to the scholars of Medieval Islam, in places like Shiraz, Tabriz, Cairo, and Samarkand.

Galen will highlight works of al-Kwarizmi (hence our word "algorithm"), al-Haytham (you may recognize the name Alhazen), and Ulugh Beg, among others.

Galen Gisler was born under the dark and starry skies of eastern New Mexico and eventually found his way back to his home state. He traveled the country and world pursuing his education in astrophysics and working at various observatories. In 1981, he began a 25-year career at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Galen has been involved in a variety of activities including extragalactic gets, particle beams, plasmas, astronomical transients, adaptive processing, and hydrocode simulations of impact processes and tsunamis. He has recently moved to Colorado, but returns to the planetarium to give this popular talk.

Admission: $8/adult; $6/child; $20/family
Nature Center doors open at 6:45pm.
Planetarium events in general are not recommended for children under 5.

Photo: The Ulugh Beg Observatory in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, which was built in the 1420s.