Ulugh Bey (From Turkic tribe Barlas)was the Grandson of the Great Warrior Timur (Tamerlane), although, not, a great warrior like his grandfather and father before him, Ulugh beg adopted his grandfathers love for learning and developing. Ulugh Bey was an astronomer, mathematician and Sultan. His Islamised Full name Mirza (Mirza is the title) Mohammad Tāraghay bin Shāhrokh He was the most important observational astronomer of the 15th century. Ulugh Bey was one of the first to advocate and build permanently mounted astronomical instruments. His catalogue of 1018 stars (some sources count 1022) was the only such undertaking carried out between the times of Claudius Ptolemy (ca. 170 A.D.) and Tycho Brahe (ca. 1600). n 1437, Ulugh Beg determined the length of the sidereal year as 365.2570370...d = 365d 6h 10m 8s (an error of +58 seconds). In his measurements within many years he used a 50 m high gnomon. This value was improved by 28 seconds in 1525 by Nicolaus Copernicus, who appealed to the estimation of Thabit ibn Qurra (826–901), which had an error of +2 seconds. However, Beg later measured another more precise value as 365d 5h 49m 15s, which has an error of +25 seconds, making it more accurate than Copernicus estimate which had an error of +30 seconds. Beg also determined the Earths axial tilt as 23.52 degrees, which remained the most accurate measurement for hundreds of years. It was more accurate than later measurements by Copernicus and Tycho Brahe. Ulugh Beg (said Bey In Turkish) built the Ulugh Bey Madrasah ,Observatory centre, making Uzbekiston a place for learning inviting high scholars from the Islamic world to study and teach there. Unfortunately, the Observatory was destroyed, (not long after his own Murder) by Fundamental Islamist (religious fanatics). It wasn’t rediscovered until 1908 by V.L Vyatkin
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 04:53:19 +0000
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