The Sicilian astrolabe in the University Museum of the History of Science Oxford is the smallest object in the collection with a diameter of 59 mm.. The collector Lewis Evans acquired it from the antiquarian bookseller and publisher Leo S. Olschki in Florence in 1901 and made it available to the museum in 1924. He dated it to around 1460, whereas David A. King assumes a much earlier creation time of around 1300 due to the Arabic influence.
The instrument is set up for latitude 38° and thus points to Sicily. Mater and limb are in one piece, with the limb divided into 4 x 90° and an hour scale without inscription. On the reverse side there is a shadow square and a diagram of unequal hours. It is a combined north/south astrolabe whose projection boundary is unusually the celestial equator and not the tropic of Capricorn.
The complete description of the instrument as PDF for download
