Folio from a manuscript of the Kitab suwar al-kawakib al-thabita by 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi Iran, late 15th-early 16th C Ink, gold and opaque watercolor on paper 2002.50.145, cat64 Gold disks scattered across this seated figure mark the major stars of the constellation Cassiopeia. Named "the enthroned one" (dhat al-kursi) in Arabic, this constellation of the Northern Hemisphere was pictured in antiquity as the beautiful, but tragically vain Queen Cassiopeia of Greek mythology. This painting was part of a now-dispersed manuscript of al-Sufi's Kitab suwar al-kawakib al-thabita (Book of the Fixed Stars), a tenth-century astronomical manual that expanded and updated Ptolemy's Almagest, integrating it with the rich star lore and nomenclature of the pre-Islamic Arabic tradition. For each of the forty-eight constellations, al-Sufi provided a description, a star chart and two images, the first as seen on a celestial globe and the second as it appeared in the heavens.
aperture=f3.2 focal length: 60.0 mm exposure 1/100 sec ISO: 2000