Samarkand

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I learned so much from my trip to Samarkand (former names are Marakanda and Smarakanda)! I felt that I was a part of history that counts back 2500 years when I visited Gur Emir Mausoleum where Amir Temur, his sons and his grandson Ulug Beg were burried. I could not imagine that in the 15th century (1438) Ulug Beg was able to constuct an observatory and the table of the values of such trigonometric finctions as sine and tangent with 1 degree intervals and correct to the eighth decimal place. Ulug Beg also worked with cubic equations and the Binomial Theorem. The catalogue of stars created by Ulug Beg contained positions of 992 stars and was the first comprehensive catalogue since that of Ptolemy. There is a lot of research about trigonometric functions, geometric constructions, and Astronomy development I plan to conduct as soon as I return to New York.

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