A huge chunk of Astronomy comes from Arabia. Around 1000 AD Baghdad was going gangbusters in terms science.

A speech by Neil Degrasse Tyson. 10 min. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDAT98eEN5Q

He talks about the concept of Naming rights.

For example

1. The US does not have to put .us at the end of its webpages because it developed and perfected the modern internet.
2. The US after WW2 was THE center of the world in physics and chemistry. That's why you have Californium, Berkelium and the rest of the Periodic table with American names.
3. The UK does not put UK on its postage stamps because they invented the post.
4. Two thirds of all stars have Arabic Names because of Baghdad.

He argues that the reason that a lot Arabic advancements where lost to Ideological shift from science to religion.

He mentions Al-Ghazali a 12 century philospher who wrote

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_the_Philosophers

A key part which is talked in the wiki page and can be read from in more detail

https://archive.org/details/TheIncoherenceOfThePhilosophers-EnglishTranslationOfImamGhazalis on page 167

...our opponent claims that the agent of the burning is the fire exclusively;’ this is a natural, not a voluntary agent, and cannot abstain from what is in its nature when it is brought into contact with a receptive substratum. This we deny, saying: The agent of the burning is God, through His creating the black in the cotton and the disconnexion of its parts, and it is God who made the cotton burn and made it ashes either through the intermediation of angels or without intermediation. For fire is a dead body which has no action, and what is the proof that it is the agent? Indeed, the philosophers have no other proof than the observation of the occurrence of the burning, when there is contact with fire, but observation proves only a simultaneity, not a causation, and, in reality, there is no other cause but God.

The concept that its god not X plus the rejection of non believers views such as Aristotle and Plato is according to Tyson the impetus for the loss of such Naming rights that Islam has not recovered form.

If you watch the entirety of his presentation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epLhaGGjfRw 41 min.

You see that he attacks Aristotle, Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton for the same thing. The Idea that God is the reason in his view kills scientific inquiry. And any nation that embraces that view will lose "Naming Rights" hence recognition.

For specific people I would recommend checking out ibn al Alhazen. In my opinion this guy was Newton on steroids.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham

from the synopsis:

He has been said to be the father of modern optics, experimental physics and scientific methodology and could be regarded as the first theoretical physicist.

A huge chunk of Astronomy comes from India. From what I know, the inspiration came from translated Greek texts in the first few centuries AD and the Golden Age of Indian Astronomy started around the 6th century AD with Aryabhatta. Now many Indian astronomers were also mathematicians in their own right - Aryabhata's list of accomplishments were tremendous:

• He approximated the value of pi and may have implied that it is irrational
• Trigonometry - the Latin word sinus comes from Arabic jiba which came from the Sanskrit word ardha-jya which he used (similarly cos comes from kojya)
• He states that the earth rotated on its own axis
• His works were translated into Arabic and were cited by Arab astronomers and mathematicians including Al khwarizmi.
• Arab astronomy flourished during the Islamic Golden Age and ideas were further transmitted West

Other famous Indian astronomers include Brahmagupta, Varahamihira, Bhaskara I and Bhaskara II - India consistently names it's satellites after these guys

This is a really cool BBC documentary about the history of India math by Marcus du Satoy

Avicenna (Ibn Sina) 10th century Persian astronomer, physician, polymath.