Talk:Equatorium

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment[edit]

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Rar27345, Alecvancuren.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:46, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: pages swapped. Ronhjones ^(Talk) 19:30, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Equitorium → Equatorium — The correct spelling of this astronomical instrument is 'equatorium'. Articles were originally created under both that spelling and for 'equitorium' but they were unfortunately merged to the wrong spelling. Thus, could these two pages be exchanged? Many thanks. –Syncategoremata (talk) 17:07, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Deor (talk) 13:18, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly support Equatorium is the common name in the historical literature. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 14:55, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Albion (astronomy) redirects here. This is ambiguous, since there is another astronomical object with the same name, Albion (formerly 1992 QB1, the namesake of the Cubewano asteroids). Renerpho (talk) 22:21, 3 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Invention[edit]

There are several sources that ascribe the invention of the equatorium to al-Zarqālī [1][2][3]. So what do you think? Andy Dingley

Also, there are several inventions in Wikipedia that has been ascribed to multiple cultures at the same time like Armillary sphere for example. So how about adding both Greek inventions and Arab inventions categories for this article? Viaros17 (talk) 16:53, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The first paragraph of the “Overview” section mentions that the equatorium was known at least back to Proclus in the fifth century, which is about 500 years before al-Zarqālī… The Arab astronomer might have perfected the instrument, but he certainly did not invent it… CielProfond (talk) 22:02, 20 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Issues with this article[edit]

I’m not sure how to interpret the historical information given by this article. First, we read that “the first surviving description of [a planetary equatorium] is from the Libros del saber de astronomia” in the thirteenth century. The article about these books says they were “commissioned between 1276 and 1279.” Just after that, we read that “Theorica Planetarum (c. 1261-1264) by Campanus of Novara describes the construction of an equatorium, the earliest known description in Latin Europe.”

It would seem from reading this that Campanus was the first European to describe the equatorium; not the Libros… Why mention them as “the first,” then?

The first paragraph in the “History” section is more about the life and works of al-Zarqali. I’d like to reiterate my previous comment that al-Zarqali cannot have invented the instrument, as Proclus mentioned it a few centuries before. A better term would be “perfected” or “developed.”

The section “Variations” is almost a repetition of the second paragraph of the “Overview” section.

Then we have the “Astrolabe compared with equatorium” section, whose content, in my opinion, should be placed at the beginning of the “History” section, as it related more to al-Zarqali’s take on the device.

CielProfond (talk) 03:35, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the reference to al-Zarqali being "the first to show clearly the motion of the solar apogee" (currently reference 5, going to MuslimHeritage.com) makes no mention of this discovery—or of the movement of the solar apogee, for that matter.

CielProfond (talk) 06:16, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@CielProfond:; I (hopefully) solved the issues. The Libros del saber de astronomia is a 13th century book, but it contains 13th century translations of 11th century works, so in a sense it is the "earliest" description of a planetary equatorium (it's a Latin text, but the originals were Arabic). The Theorica Planetarum is a 13th century Latin work that is the earliest work in Latin (not a translation). I think I solved the al-Zarqali issue too, since his (or rather Ibn al-Samh's) work is the earliest known description of a planetary equatorium (Proclus' was a solar equatorium). I also removed redundancies in the text. --MassimoDellaPena (talk) 13:03, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]