'Ring of Fire' Eclipse Enthrals Skywatchers in Middle East, Asia

Thousands of skywatchers gathered across parts of the Middle East and Asia on Thursday to glimpse the sun forming a ring of fire around the moon in a rare annular solar eclipse. From a report: An annular eclipse occurs when the moon covers the sun's center but leaves its outer edges visible to form a ring. Thursday's was visible in Saudi Arabia as well as Singapore, India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

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[Nidi62]

Historically, you'd get executed for this.

Has something changed in the last 800 years that I'm not aware of?

While Europe was executing astronomers who said the Earth wasn't in the center of the universe, the Middle East was a hot bed of scientific knowledge.

Re:Watching the sky in the Middle East

[kbahey]

Maybe you are trolling ... but ...

On the contrary: there was a long tradition of observing the sky from circa 750 CE to 1600s CE. Not that it stopped after that, but it cooled off considerably ...

That tradition continued what the Greek astronomers started, and refined their observations. There were calculations for eclipse times and places, measurements of the earth's circumferences in two different ways (one akin to Eratosthenes from ~ 150 BCE, and another using trignometery and an astrolabe).

Here are some presentations that I did explaining some of that history:

Al-Sufi's Book Of Fixed Stars [baheyeldin.com], the first illustrated sky atlas ever written, corrects Claudius Ptolemy's Almagest observations.

Medieval Islamic Astronomy and Its Influence on Renaissance Europe [baheyeldin.com].

Islamic Astronomy's and Its Legacy in Modern Star Names [baheyeldin.com].

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[PPH]

Is that why many of the names of stars are Arabic?

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[thomn8r]

We were looking for the Man in Black, not the Man in B rown

Sudden urge to listen to Johnny Cash

[olsmeister]

I don't understand it, but I suddenly have an irresistible urge to listen to the Man in Black. This is not normal for me.