October 27th
On
the 27th October 1449, probably the last of the great Arab
astronomers Ulugh Beg sometimes called the Sultan of the Stars died.
He was the grandson of Tamerlane the Mongol leader who founded the
Timurid empire in Persia and Central Asia.
Ulugh
Beg was a Timurid ruler as well as an astronomer and mathematician.
He built a great observatory in Samarkand in 1428 in Central Asia
which today is part of Uzbekistan. The observatory which although it
contained no telescopes was considered to be one of the finest in the
Islamic world and was the largest in Central Asia. It was only
surpassed in importance when Tycho Brahe the Danish astronomer who
studied the Supernova in 1572 built his observatory called Uraniborg
in 1576.
Ulugh
Beg observed the night sky from his observatory and in 1437 produced
a catalogue of 994 stars and realised that the observations he was
making showed that the catalogues made by the Greek astronomer
Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD , which were then also used
by Arab astronomers were not accurate. His catalogue is regarded as
the most accurate produced between those made by Ptolemy and Tycho
Brahe.
Sadly
his scientific expertise was not matched by his skills in running an
empire. There was a lot of in fighting within his family and after
several rebellions he was killed on the instructions of his son.
Please visit my website to view my astronomy talks at www.astrognome.co.uk
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| Ulugh Beg The Sultan of the Stars |
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After
over 4 months of fighting the during the Sino Japanese war, Japanese
forces captured the city of Wuhan on October 27th 1938. The battle
which covered a large geographical area was one of the most important
in the early part of the war. There were heavy casualties on both
sides, it is estimated that 400,000 casualties were suffered by the
Chinese with the Japanese losing around 140,000 men. There are some
estimates that suggest that these figures are an under estimate and
that the true number iwas over a million people were killed on both
sides
The second Sino-Japanese war began on July 7th 1937 with a
full scale Japanese invasion of China following an incident on the
Marc Polo Bridge. In 1938 Wuhan was the second largest city in China
and was situated on the Yangtse and was therefore an obvious target
for the Japanese.
After
the battle a large part of the Chinese Air Force and Navy was
destroyed, however major elements of the Chinese army remained
intact. The battle had also severely weakened the Japanese army to
the effect that although there were some advances into central China
between 1939-42 no major operations by the Japanese forces would be
launched until 1944 with the operation called Ichi-Go.
I present The Astronomy Show on the community station Drystone Radio 103.5 FM, every Wednesday afternoon between 3.00 pm and 5.00 pm. The show can be heard on line at www.drystoneradio.com
I will be lecturing on a cruise ship in the arctic looking for the Northern Lights during the next 2 weeks, the next Astronomy Show will be on Wednesday 14th November.
