The first recorded instance of Uranus being spotted in the night sky is believed to date back to Classical Antiquity. During the 2nd century BCE, Hipparchos - the Greek astronomer, mathematician and founder of trigonometry - apparently recorded the planet as a star in his star catalogue (completed in 129 BCE). This catalog was later incorporated into Ptolemy's Almagest, which became the definitive source for Islamic astronomers and for scholars in Medieval Europe for over one-thousand years... This included English astronomer John Flamsteed, who in 1690 observed the star on six occasions and catalogued it as a star in the...