Galileo Galileo (February 15, 1564 - January 8, 1642)
One of the first who used a telescope (a term he coined in April, 1611) to
observe the skies in late 1609, and the first to publish his observation to a
wider audience; a summary of the first discoveries was published in his famous
Sidereus Nuncius (Siderial Messenger) in May 1610. His first telescope had
a free aperture of 16 mm and magnification of 21.
Discovered many phenomena:
- November 30 to December 10, observations of the
Moon.
Discovers "mountains" (and craters).
- November XX, 1609, Milky Way consists of stars.
- 1609, numerous faint stars, e.g. in Orion's Sword (but failed to perceive
the Orion Nebula) and in the
Pleiades (M45).
- 1609, Praesepe, M44, is a star cluster.
- January 7, 1610, 3 moons of Jupiter; January XX, 4th moon.
- July 1610, strange appearance of
Saturn
(suggestions caused by the Rings)
- December 1610, phases of Venus.
- May 1611,
sunspots
- Pre-discovery sighting of Neptune in 1612.
Note: Some of these discoveries were independent rediscoveries, e.g. Thomas
Harriot discovered the mountains on the
Moon
and sunspots earlier.
Previously, Galileo had observed and studied the "New Star" of 1604
(Kepler's
supernova).
Links:
Posthumous honors are numerous and include trivial things like street names,
e.g. in Paris, France: Rue Galilée,
and in Munich, Germany: Galileiplatz.
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Hartmut Frommert
(spider@seds.org)
Christine Kronberg
(smil@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)