Today is the winter solstice – in the North Hemisphere, this means it is the longest night of the year. Daniel Durrani has shared some of the customs of Shob e Yalda, an Iranian festival which is celebrated on 21st December: ‘we read poetry and eat pomegranates’.
I think it’s a nice astrolabe, plus you can find lots of fascinating Persian things like that. In the past, I think we used to be the best at making astronomical instruments; and we were beaten only by the Greeks I would guess, since they invented the diopter and planisphere and all the things from which modern astronomy got its foundations.