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"It's a lunascope, old boy - no more messing around with moon charts, see?"
— Wizard from Diagon Alley explaining lunascopes to a fellow diner[src]

A lunascope was an astronomical instrument invented by Perpetua Fancourt,[1] which showed the phases of the moon. It was created to counter the difficulty of using moon charts.[2]

History[]

Lunascope

Perpetua Fancourt using a lunascope

In December 1927, Newt Scamander offered up one of his lunascopes to negotiate for information from the goblin gangster Gnarlak, regarding his missing beasts that were freely roaming New York. However, Gnarlak was uninterested, as he retorted that he himself owned five of them.[4]

During the 1983–1984 school year, there was a lunascope in the Artefact Room at Hogwarts.[5]

Before the start of his third year at Hogwarts, Harry Potter spent some time at the Leaky Cauldron exploring the shops in Diagon Alley and eating under brightly-coloured umbrellas outside cafés, where diners were showing each other their purchases. One diner boasted that he had bought a lunascope, which, it was claimed, removed the need to mess around with moon charts.[2]

Albus Dumbledore kept one in his office. Harry Potter chucked it into the fireplace in 1996, lashing out in anger over the death of his godfather, Sirius Black.[3]

Appearances[]

Notes and references[]

Astronomy
Astronomy Pottermore
Professors: Satyavati Shah · Aurora Sinistra
Astronomy at Hogwarts: Astronomy classroom · Astronomy Corridor · Astronomy Club · Astronomy department · Astronomy homework meeting · Astronomy reading room · Astronomy Room · Astronomy Stairs · Astronomy Tower
Astronomers: Aurora Sinistra · Copernicus · George von Rheticus · Perpetua Fancourt · Hesper Starkey
Objects: Astrolabe · Globe of the Moon · Lunascope · Moon chart · Orrery · Sextant · Star chart · Telescope
Planets: Jupiter · Mars · Mercury · Neptune · Pluto · Rogue planets · Saturn · Uranus · Venus
Satellites: Callisto · Europa · Ganymede · Io · Moon
Constellations: Aquila · Bartholomeus · Cetus · Crater · Dark cloud constellations · Orion · Ursa Major
Other topics: Black holes · Cosmic ages · Dark energy · Dark matter · Eclipse · Lunar phases · Meteor showers · Space weather · Wormholes
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