Armillary-sphere Sentence Examples

When several rings or circles were combined representing the great circles of the heavens, the instrument became an armillary sphere.

Eratosthenes (276-196 B.C.) used most probably a solstitial armilla for measuring the obliquity of the ecliptic. Hipparchus (160-125 B.C.) probably used an armillary sphere of four rings.

Idrisi, the best known of the Arabian geographical authors, after travelling far and wide in the first half of the 12th century, settled in Sicily, where he wrote a treatise descrip tive of an armillary sphere which he had constructed for Roger II., the Norman king, and in this work he incorporated all accessible results of contemporary travel.

The armillary sphere survives as useful for teaching, and may be described as a skeleton celestial globe, the series of rings representing the great circles of the heavens, and revolving on an axis within a horizon.