Book of Fixed Stars
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Ptolemy's catalogue is corrected against the author's own observations of magnitude and colour, and the record includes what is now known as the Andromeda galaxy, described as a little cloud.
- Ptolemaic magnitudes corrected against direct observation
- constellations drawn in mirrored pairs for sky and globe
- the earliest surviving record of the Andromeda nebula
- Arabic star names fixed in a form still current
Al-Sufi went through the forty-eight Ptolemaic constellations, giving for each a drawing in two mirrored orientations, a table of star positions, and his own estimates of brightness, which he corrected where Ptolemy's disagreed with what he could see. He records the Andromeda nebula as a small cloud and mentions a cluster in the far southern sky reported by sailors, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The book fixed many Arabic star names still in use.
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