Book of the constellations (Kitāb ṣuwar al-kawākib al-thābita), by `Abd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī (d. 986)

Book of the constellations (Kitāb ṣuwar al-kawākib al-thābita), by `Abd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī (d. 986). For many centuries, astronomers in west Asia retained, reviewed and revised inherited scientific models, but kept an open mind. In this book on the constellations, for example, the Iranian astronomer `Abd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī (d. 986, Baghdad) referred carefully to the star catalogue recorded by Ptolemy in the second century AD (Ptolemy in turn drew from his own predecessors), and also compared that scientific system to the star-names used in Arab folk astronomy. Al-Ṣūfī's book discussed the forty-eight "classical" constellations (including the Zodiac constellations), recorded their celestial longitude and latitude positions (in the star tables here), and provided two mirror-images of each constellation. These two twin images explained visually how the stars have long been imagined as fixed to a single sphere around the Earth: looking into the night sky, you will see into this sphere from the curved "inside". However, if you looked at the same constellation on a three-dimensional model of that starry sphere (familiar as the celestial globe), you would be seeing that constellation fro