Improving X-ray CT images of the Antikythera Mechanism

Jan 1, 2022

The Antikythera Mechanism is best described as a 2000 year old ancient greek astronomical computer. Having laid on the sea for the majority of this time its bronze interior has corroded and calcified making it incredibly fragile. X-ray CT was utilised as a non-destructive tool to analyse it, unfortunately it became apparent that the most promising scan of the main fragment was missing raw projections. In this project, those missing projections were identified by analysis of the raw data. The X-ray CT reconstruction was recomputed with irregular angular intervals resulting in the originally intended quality.

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The Antikythera Mechanism and improving the best image we have of its inner workings
The Antikythera Mechanism is an astronomical calculator made by the ancient Greeks in 200 BC that was capable of indicating the timing and characteristics of eclipses, positions of the sun and moon, including the moon’s phase and quite possibly the location of the five visible planets that can be seen with the naked eye.
Mar 2, 2019 5 min read article
Project
The Antikythera Mechanism and improving the best image we have of its inner workings

Publications

Improved X-ray computed tomography reconstruction of the largest fragment of the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient Greek astronomical calculator
The Antikythera Mechanism is an extraordinarily complex ancient Greek astronomical calculating device whose mode of operation is now …
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