In a sunlit gallery of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Italy, astronomer Brad Schaefer came face to face with an ancient statue known as the Farnese Atlas. For centuries, the 7-foot marble figure ...

These famous astronomers bettered our understanding of the universe. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Throughout human history, ...

Claudius Ptolemy was a Greek mathematician, astronomer and geographer who lived in the Egyptian city of Alexandria while under the rule of the Roman Empire. Much of medieval astronomy and geography ...

It was only natural for Alexander Jones to feel thrilled when he saw a sixth-century palimpsest at the Ambrosiana library in Milan for the first time. It happened in 1984 when Jones was working on his ...

Islamic scholars significantly advanced astronomy between 800 and 1300 AD. They made precise astronomical calculations using advanced math. Their work included building observatories and inventing new ...

Rachel Newcomb is an anthropologist and the Diane and Michael Maher distinguished professor of teaching and learning at Rollins College. She is the author of “Everyday Life in Global Morocco.” How ...

I.—APPARENT MAGNITUDES: (a) VISUAL.THE magnitude of a star, as determined by direct astronomical observation, is a measure of its apparent brightness on a scale which has been precisely defined only ...

On September 27, Mars sailed past its rival star, Antares, in Scorpius. Two days earlier, it had slipped into Ophiuchus the Serpent-bearer. “Ah, there’s Mars in the zodiac’s 13th sign,” I beamed — ...

Gazing at the heavens arrayed before us—at least as pictured in a 1690 Polish volume on display in a fascinating exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art—we see Urania, the goddess of astronomy, ...