Astronomy was a very important discipline in the Ottoman Empire. Ali Quşhji, one of the most important astronomers of the state, managed to make the first map of the Moon and wrote the first book describing the shapes of the Moon. At the same time, a new system was developed for Mercury. Mustafa ibn Muwaqqit and Muhammad Al-Qunawi, another important astronomer of the Ottoman Empire, developed the first astronomical calculations measuring minutes and seconds.

Taqi al-Din later built the Constantinople Observatory of Taqi ad-Din in 1577, where he carried out astronomical observations until 1580. He produced a Zij (named Unbored Pearl) and astronomical catalogues that were more accurate than those of his contemporaries, Tycho Brahe and Nicolaus Copernicus. Taqi al-Din was also the first astronomer to employ a decimal point notation in his observations rather than the sexagesimal fractions used by his contemporaries and predecessors. He also made use of Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī's method of "three points observation". In The Nabk Tree, Taqi al-Din described the three points as "two of them being in opposition in the ecliptic and the third in any desired place." He used this method to calculate the eccentricity of the Sun's orbit and the annual motion of the apogee, and so did Copernicus before him, and Tycho Brahe shortly afterwards. He also invented a variety of other astronomical instruments, including accurate mechanical astronomical clocks from 1556 to 1580. Due to his observational clock and other more accurate instruments Taqi al-Din's values were more accurate.^[29]

After the destruction of the Constantinople observatory of Taqi al-Din in 1580, astronomical activity stagnated in the Ottoman Empire, until the introduction of Copernican heliocentrism in 1660, when the Ottoman scholar Ibrahim Efendi al-Zigetvari Tezkireci translated Noël Duret's French astronomical work (written in 1637) into Arabic.^[30]