Bronze Armillary Dial

sold out!
Terrestrial globes depict the Earth and celestial globes depict the Heavens. Armillary spheres are the Ptolemaic concept with wooden blue center, which symbolizes the Earth as the center of the Universe and the heavens in relation surrounding it.

Early man, looking at the heavens, believed the stars were fixed to the inside surface of a rotating sphere. From a modern perspective it is pretty strange to assume that our world is the center of the Universe. We now know that we live on the fringe of a nearly infinite and ever expanding universe. Armillary dials have the earth positioned inside a mesh of bronze hoops, symbolizing the course of the planets as known at the time. The course of the Sun is shown by a wide band called the ecliptic circle. Armillary or astronomical spheres go back to B.C. Greece.