Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi

Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi was born in Rayy (near modern Tehran) and worked in Isfahan and Shiraz under the patronage of the Buyid Emir Adud al-Dawla. He re-examined and corrected Ptolemy's Almagest star catalog through decades of rigorous empirical celestial observation.

In 964, Al-Sufi completed his masterpiece, Kitab Suwar al-Kawakib (The Book of Fixed Stars). Featuring lavish dual illustrations of every constellation (as seen on a celestial globe and as viewed directly in the night sky), his book contains the earliest known historical recording of the Andromeda Galaxy (which he described as a 'small nebulous cloud') and the Large Magellanic Cloud, centuries before European astronomers.