ScienceCentral Asia
Ulugh Beg's observatory
A prince measures the sky with a thirty-metre quadrant
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The precision came from the instrument's size: the longer the radius, the finer the degrees can be divided. Ulugh Beg was killed by his own son, and the observatory demolished by religious opponents — one of the most concrete examples that scientific progress is not a one-way process. Its foundations were rediscovered in 1908.
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Timur's grandson Ulugh Beg built an observatory in Samarkand with an instrument sunk into the ground. His star catalogue was the most accurate in the world for two centuries, and he got the length of the year wrong by less than a minute.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org