Search Results: Latitude

The astrolabe is an astronomical instrument used from around the 6th century to measure time and position by determining the altitude of heavenly bodies like the Sun and certain stars. Measurements were taken in reference to the viewer's...

Henry Hudson (c. 1570-1611) was an English navigator and maritime explorer. He is known for his four voyages between 1607 and 1610 in search of a northwest passage via the Arctic Ocean to the Far East. The lure of a northwest passage became...

Vasco da Gama (c. 1469-1524) was a Portuguese navigator who, in 1497-9, sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and arrived at Calicut (now Kozhikode) on the south-west coast of India. This was the first direct voyage from...

Claudius Ptolemy (c. 100 to c. 170 CE) was an Alexandrian mathematician, astronomer, and geographer. His works survived antiquity and the Middle Ages intact, and his theories, particularly on a geocentric model of the universe with planets...

Hipparchus of Nicea (l. c. 190 - c. 120 BCE) was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician regarded as the greatest astronomer of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time. He is best known for his discovery of the precession...

The term science comes from the Latin word scientia, meaning “knowledge”. It can be defined as a systematic attempt to discover, by means of observation and reasoning, particular facts about the world, and to establish laws connecting...

The passage of time has always been a preoccupation of human beings, whether it be a question of satisfying basic needs such as when to eat and sleep, the importance of seasons for migratory and agricultural purposes or a more sophisticated...

Scythian warfare used state-of-the-art recurve bows and hit-and-run tactics against set infantry formations. Working from nimble horses, Scythian warriors could unleash a cloud of lethal arrows. Known, too, for their innovative use of scale...

Julia Domna (160-217 CE) was a Syrian-born Roman empress during the reign of her husband, Roman emperor Septimius Severus (r. April 193 - February 211 CE). She was also the mother of the emperors Geta (r. 209-211 CE) and Caracalla (r. 198-217...

Menelaus of Alexandria was a Greek astronomer, scientist, and mathematician who lived around 100 CE. Menelaus made a significant and lasting contribution to the fields of astronomy, geometry, and trigonometry. His major work, the Spherics...