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A 3rd Century CE mosaic from Tusculum, a major ancient Roman city in the Latium region of Italy. Athena (Minerva), goddess of war, can be seen (middle) with the phases of the moon surrounding her. This mosaic is held in the Greek Cross Room...

A c. 1598 coloured lithographic print showing the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) and the mural quadrant he used to measure the elevation of heavenly bodies at his observatory, Uraniborg. (Roman Picture Library and Royal Astronomical...

This is the latest datable clay tablet in the British Museum. It gives the monthly positions of the planets in the zodiac signs and the dates of their characteristic phenomena. Dates of solstices, equinoxes, and eclipses are also given. The...

The Intihuatana Stone or 'Hitching Post of the Sun' at Machu Picchu in the High Andes. The stone was used by Inca priests for astronomical observations, especially of the sun. In ceremonies during the solstices the priests symbollically tied...

A colourised c. 1667 CE portrait of Adam Schall (1591-1666 CE), A Jesuit missionary and scholar who introduced many new scientific ideas into China. (Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles)

An 18th-century engraving of the Paris Observatory, founded in 1667. Image taken from Wolf, Charles J. E. (1902) Histoire de l’Observatoire de Paris de sa fondation a 1793.

A diagram created by the famous Iranian polymath Al-Biruni (973 – after 1050) depicting a Lunar Eclipse.

An illustration of astronomers observing a solar eclipse at the Narai Observatory in the Kingdom of Siam (Thailand) in the 1680s. From "Three Military Accounts of the 1688 Revolution in Siam" by Michael Smithies.

A print showing the Royal Observatory in Greenwich near London, founded in 1675. Engraving by Francis Place after Robert Thacker c. 1678. (British Library, London)

An image captured in 1986 of Halley's Comet, named after the English scientist and cartographer Edmond Halley (1656-1742) who accurately predicted its orbit in relation to Earth.