Abstract
'Abd al-Raḥmān al-ḥūfī’s Book of the Fixed Stars dates from around AD 964 and is one of the most important medieval Arabic treatises on astronomy. In this paper we begin with a very brief introduction to the Book of the Fixed Stars. This book contains an extensive star catalogue that lists star coordinates and magnitude estimates for all of the Ptolemaic stars. However, in his book al-ḥūfī utilized three distinct intermediate magnitude values whereas Ptolemy only mentioned two. We believe that al-ḥūfī used what we have termed a ‘3-step intermediate magnitude system,’ which is more accurate than Ptolemy’s 2-step intermediate system. In this paper we examine in detail the accuracy of this unique 3-step system in comparison with Ptolemy’s and modern magnitude values.
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Acknowledgements
The first author (IH) is grateful to staff at the various institutions who provided him with access to copies of al-Ṣūfī’s Book of the Fixed Stars. Meanwhile, the third author (WO) wishes to thank Professor Boonrucksar Soonthornthum for providing him with a Visiting Professorship at NARIT in 2012, which offered an environment where he was able to complete the revision of this paper.
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Hafez, I., Stephenson, F.R., Orchiston, W. (2015). ’Abd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī’s 3-Step Magnitude System. In: Orchiston, W., Green, D., Strom, R. (eds) New Insights From Recent Studies in Historical Astronomy: Following in the Footsteps of F. Richard Stephenson. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, vol 43. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07614-0_11
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