CHAPTERS ON TEE STARS. 383 



longitudes and latitudes of Ptolemy, the former being increased by 12° 

 42' on account of the precession during the interval between his time 

 and that to which Ptolemy's catalogue was reduced. The translator says 

 of his work that it gives a description of the starry heavens at the time 

 of the author and is worthy of the highest confidence. The main body 

 of the work consists of a detailed description of each constellation, 

 mentioning the positions and appearances of the stars which it contains. 

 Here we find the Arabic names of the stars, which were not, however, 

 used as proper names, but seem rather to have been Arabic words 

 representing some real or supposed peculiarity of the separate stars, or 

 arbitrarily applied to them. 



Four centuries later arose the celebrated Ulugh Beigh, grandson of 

 Tamerlane, who reigned at Samarcand in the middle of the fifteenth 

 century. Bailey says of him: "Ulugh Beigh was not only a warlike 

 and powerful monarch, but also an eminent promoter of the sciences 

 and of learned men. During his father's lifetime he had attracted to 

 his capital all the most celebrated astronomers from different parts of 

 the world; he erected there an immense college and observatory, in 

 which above a hundred persons were constantly occupied in the pursuits 

 of science, and caused instruments to be constructed of a better form 

 and greater dimensions than any that had hitherto been used for 

 making astronomical observations." 



His fate was one which so enlightened a promoter of learning little 

 deserved; he was assassinated by the order of his own son, who desired 

 to succeed him on his throne; and in order to make his position the 

 more secure, also put his only brother to death. A catalogue of the 

 stars bears the name of this monarch; he is supposed to have made 

 many or most of the observations on which it is founded. Posterity will 

 be likely to suppose that a sovereign used the eyes of others more than 

 his own in making the observations. However this may be, his cata- 

 logue seems to have been the first in which the positions of the stars 

 given by Ptolemy were carefully revised. He found that there were 

 twenty-seven of Ptolemy's stars too far south to be visible at Samarcand, 

 and that eight others, although diligently looked after, could not be 

 discovered. It is curious that, like Al-Sufi, he does not seem to have 

 added any new stars to Ptolemy's list. 



Next in the order of time comes the work of Bayer, whose method of 

 naming the stars has already been described. The main feature of this 

 work consists of maps of all the constellations. Previous to his time, 

 celestial globes, made especially for the use of the navigator, took the 

 place of maps of the stars. The first edition of this book was published 

 in 1603, and is distinguished by the fact that a list of* stars in each 

 constellation is printed on the backs of the maps. Bayer did not confine 



