Astrolabe

This was inspired by a TED video by Tom Wujec. See it here: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/tom_wujec_demos_the_13th_century_astrolabe.html I spent some time drawing this in Corel and used a variety of sources for copying the lines. The electric astrolabe from here; http://www.astrolabes.org/electric.htm was an excellent source and star fields can be printed for any location. Thanks to James Morrison for that. Another good source is from Daniel Rislove here: http://www.uwsp.edu/physastr/rislove/astrolabe/resource.htm You can print a paper version to test it. You can download a program for creating sundials and astrolabes ( they cost ) here: http://pagesperso-orange.fr/blateyron/sundials/shadowspro/

Since I currently live in Peru I was interested in creating an Astrolabe for Southern hemispheres, they work in reverse so I needed to create a different outer ring and rete. I have included parts for both hemispheres. The instrument is probably not very accurate as I used images as a