Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to analyse the impact that conditions in space have on the people who explore it and how they meet their needs there, to assess the role of space-exploration technology in observing and understanding environmental changes on Earth, and to identify technologies used in space exploration and describe how innovations have contributed to our understanding of space. The museum offers an astrolabe plate of earlier sky-watchers, a scientist who worked with photographs of the Moon and satellite images of the Earth, and one astronaut's days on the International Space Station; the class brings today's telescopes, probes, satellites and stations and what each has taught us, which the museum does not hold. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- E1.1 analyse the impact that conditions in space have on humans engaged in space exploration, and explain how humans meet their social, emotional, and physiological needs in space
- E1.2 assess the role of space exploration technology in observing and understanding environmental changes on Earth, including climate change
- E2.6 identify various technologies used in space exploration, and describe how technological innovations have contributed to our understanding of space
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
What did the technology make possible?
For each technology or person you read about, write what it let someone do or see that was harder before, what the record says about the needs of the people involved, and what it does not say.
Go deeper
The difficulty was not absence of earlier astronomical instruments: an ordinary astrolabe's horizon was drawn on a plate associated with a particular latitude, and moving north or south changes the horizon's relationship to the celestial sphere, requiring a suitable plate 2 3. The universal plate addresses a design question: could a different representation allow one disc to serve multiple latitudes? 4 The record on al-Zarqali's plate adds that a person still chooses the inputs and reads the marks 4.
Why they did it
Roser Puig describes al-Zarqali as a Toledan instrument maker who taught himself astronomy and worked with Said al-Andalusi under the city's ruler al-Mamun 5. Puig reports a 14th-century Egyptian witness to a lost work by Said: al-Zarqali constructed an instrument called al-zarqala for al-Mamun in 1048/1049 and wrote 100 chapters on its use 5. The record gives a patron and a use; it preserves no sentence in which al-Zarqali states his own reason.
Often misunderstood
The word "universal" can sound like an instrument that finds your place and the hour by itself. The record says universal means applicable across latitudes, not a machine that discovers location and time without knowledge or interpretation 4.
Think about it
Al-Zarqali's plate lets one disc serve several latitudes, and El-Baz used images taken from satellites to study deserts. What does each technology let a person work out that was harder before, and why?
Into the museum
- Al-Zarqali's universal astrolabe plate: the plate, the ruler for the horizon and what "universal" does not mean.
- Risalat al-Mizzi on the astrolabe: what the treatise covers, from altitudes to prayer times.
- Farouk El-Baz: Apollo landing sites, astronaut training and satellite images of deserts.
- Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor: the October 2007 flight to the station and the guidebook that went with it.
Try this
Read the card on the universal astrolabe plate. Write one sentence on what problem its design solved for the observer, then one on a space technology you know and the problem it solves.
4 Carry it further
Where this lesson leads in the museum.
5 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Al-Zarqali's universal astrolabe plate have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
One disc for many latitudes. In 11th-century Toledo, Ibrahim ibn Yahya al-Zarqali developed an astronomical plate that did not require a replacement horizon plate whenever the observer changed latitude. The plate is a geometrical representation of the sky on a disc, with lines for moving between coordinate systems and a ruler representing the horizon. It was an improvement within the astrolabe tradition. What did one disc for many latitudes make easier?
In your own words: what does Farouk El-Baz have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Looking at the Moon and the Earth from above. According to the English Wikipedia article, from 1986 Farouk El-Baz used satellite images to study the origin and evolution of desert landforms, and he is credited with providing evidence that the desert is not man-made but the result of major climatic variations. In the Apollo programme he pored over detailed photographs of the Moon's surface to select the most precise landing locations. What can an image taken from above show that a person on the ground cannot?
I can now
Notes
- 1. Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum: Science and Technology, Grades 1–8 (2022)
- 2. Marrakushi's zarqaliyya production guide — Bir et al., pp. 40, 49
- 3. Marrakushi's zarqaliyya production guide — Bir et al., pp. 49–53
- 4. Marrakushi's zarqaliyya production guide — Bir et al., pp. 47–53
- 5. Al-Zarqali — Roser Puig, BEA, pp. 1258–1260