Many inventions made it possible for Europeans to venture farther out into the ocean. One technological improvement that originated outside of Europe that Europeans learned to use was the astrolabe. The astrolabe is a tool using the positions of the stars or the Sun. It was formerly used in navigation to help explorers and sailors figure out where they were. The development of the astrolabe allowed sailors to determine how far north or south they were from the equator. A advantage of the astrolabe is that a clear horizon is not needed to use the instrument, which means that a navigator can take measurements at night, or on foggy days when it might be hard to see the horizon. One of these explorers was John Cabot’s, whose discoveries under
