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The Book of Fixed Stars (Arabic: كتاب صور الكواكب kitāb suwar al-kawākib, literally The Book of the Shapes of Stars) is an astronomical text written by Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (Azophi) around 964. Following the Graeco-Arabic translation movement in the 9th century AD, the book was written in Arabic, the common language for scholars across the vast Islamic territories, although the author himself was Persian. It was an attempt to create a synthesis of the comprehensive star catalogue in Ptolemy's Almagest (books VII and VIII) with the indigenous Arabic astronomical traditions on the constellations (notably the Arabic constellation system of the Anwā'). The original manuscript no longer survives as an autograph, however, the Book of Stars has survived in later-made copies. This image from the book shows the constellation of Orion, in mirror image as if on a celestial globe, and is from a copy in the Bodleian Library dated to the 12th century AD.Ilustration credit: Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi

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Two date formats are commonly used in Wikipedia articles: December 2, 2009 and 2 December 2009. These are referred to as alphanumeric dates. The first is used in articles with a connection to the United States, and the second in articles relating to most Commonwealth countries (although no preference is expressed for Canada). In articles with no particular national affiliation, to prevent needless edit warring, the established date format should not be changed. However any given article should use just one of the two formats consistently. Dates that are all numeric are highly discouraged to avoid confusion, however if used must be in the YYYY-MM-DD format and never in YYYY-DD-MM format.

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