Blog

Since today is 29th February, a leap-year-themed post is in order.  This one answers the question you’ve all been asking: how are leap...

I submitted my PhD thesis last week (and now have a little more time to post on this blog).  In large part it’s a study of this...

I’ve written a blog post entitled “How to cast a medieval horoscope” before.  But I didn’t tell the whole story. Regular readers of this...

Apologies for the long hiatus!  I’ve been busy with lots of things, among them the birth of my first child.  I’ll post his horoscope here...

I wrote this post for the Peterhouse Perne and Ward Libraries blog.  It is cross-posted from there with their kind permission. 28 May saw...

Regular readers of this blog (if there are any, I should apologise to them for my long silence) will be familiar with the story of King...

I was pleased to be able to speak at (and help organise) the Connecting with Collections Symposium a few weeks ago.  That event showcased...

I wrote this post for the blog of the 24th International Congress of History of Science, Technology and Medicine (iCHSTM), which takes...

I’m flying to Chicago on Wednesday.  There’ll be an unusual object in my luggage (is it wise to put that kind of statement online?). ...

This post is cross-posted from the Connecting with Collections blog. I recently read a fascinating article about the early years of the...

This post is cross-posted from the Connecting with Collections blog. At the start of this project I was only hoping to find some ...

This post is cross-posted from the Connecting with Collections blog. Last Friday was a proud day, as the object I re-discovered and am...

This is a question I’ve been asked several times, and it’s a reasonable one given that this blog is called “Astrolabes and Stuff”, yet...

We all miss the Sun at this time of year, don’t we?  (Unless you’re reading this from Australia, I suppose.)  Luckily for you, this blog...

Who's read Prisoners of the Sun?  In this enthralling Tintin story our hero is captured by a group of Inca who have survived in secret. ...

*well, on a disc of MDF, anyway. Want to know how to find the moon?  Of course you do! So far on this blog I have constructed and...

This week I’m back with my equatorium, trying to pin down precisely how well it models Ptolemy’s planetary theories (and, in turn,...

[Drumroll] Ladies and gentlemen, I shall now demonstrate the use of a medieval planetary equatorium! In the first two posts in this...

In my first post I described how I began making an equatorium according to the instructions in the fourteenth-century manuscript I’m...

I’ve just started a research project focusing on a medieval manuscript, The Equatorie of the Planetis.  This manuscript describes the...