Next on a very busy day, but almost done, exploring Samarkand we drove to the Uleg Beg Observatory. This was only recently excavated by the Soviets and sadly the inventor was not appreciated during his time and he was murdered.

Close to the Afrosiab archaeological site which covers a large part of the city, the observatory was perched on top of a hill. There is the original excavated pit and a newly built museum beside.

I'm not quite sure of the mechanics of how this works but illustrations in the museums show that the sun would shine on a different step at different times of the year. Not quite a sundial, I'm not sure what that proves?

Inside the museum there were more illustrations of scientific principals, scientific journals, and scientific instruments.

The museum was a large circular room with lots of exhibits, somewhat surprising as I never expected a museum here. The underground sexton as it is called is similar to another such device in India and there were illustrations of that one too

Back outside there was a good view and panorama shots looking back over the city, the many domes, and distant snow covered peaks. The clouds were starting to break as the next two days were fortunately expected to be quite mild