How Galileo And His Spyglass Turned The World On Its Head

The humble wooden contraption with which Galileo made the astronomical discoveries that would transform science Photo: Florence, Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza

From The Telegraph:

Today it would hardly pass muster as a child's plaything, but the telescope Galileo used 400 years ago this week to peer into the heavens overturned the foundations of knowledge, changing our perception of the universe and our place in it.

Galileo's "optick tube" had a meagre 9x magnification and was not even conceived for astronomy.

Indeed, when the gadget was first demonstrated, Venetian senators were so smitten with its military potential that they doubled Galileo's salary and awarded him a life tenure in the city-state's most prestigious university.

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Kepler's Revolutionary Achievements In 1609 Rival Galileo's

Image: Catastrophe Averted: In a page from Kepler's Astronomia Nova, the astronomer works through the theretofore unexplained orbit of Mars. Owen Gingerich

From Scientific American:

The International Year of Astronomy marks the 400th anniversary of German astronomer Johannes Kepler's breakthroughs as well as those of his better-known Italian contemporary.

Four hundred years ago this year, two events marked what scientists and historians today regard as the birth of modern astronomy. The first of them, the beginning of Galileo's telescopic observations, has been immortalized by playwrights and authors and widely publicized as the cornerstone anniversary for the International Year of Astronomy. Through his looking glass, the Italian astronomer saw the mountains and valleys of the moon, the satellites of Jupiter, and sunspots—observations that would play a huge role in discrediting the prevailing, church-endorsed view of an Earth-centered cosmos.

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Galileo's Vision

Image: Galileo was the first to discover the moons of Jupiter. Michael Benson / Kinetikon Pictures / Corbis (Jupiter) / Scala / Art Resource, NY (Galileo)

From The Smithsonium:

Four hundred years ago, the Italian scientist looked into space and changed our view of the universe.

Inside a glass case sits a plain-looking tube, worn and scuffed. Lying in the street, it would look like a length of old pipe. But as I approach it, Derrick Pitts—only half in jest—commands: "Bow down!"

The unremarkable-looking object is in fact one of the most important artifacts in the history of science: it's one of only two surviving telescopes known to have been made by Galileo Galilei, the man who helped revolutionize our conception of the universe. The telescope is the centerpiece of "Galileo, the Medici and the Age of Astronomy," an exhibition at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia (until September 7).

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Scientists To Solve Astronomical Riddle Using Galileo DNA

NASA image shows hot blue stars deep inside an elliptical galaxy. Italian scientists are trying to get Galileo's DNA in order to figure out how the astronomer forged groundbreaking theories on the universe while gradually becoming blind, a historian said Monday. (AFP/NASA/File)

From Yahoo News/AFP:

ROME (AFP) – Italian scientists are trying to get Galileo's DNA in order to figure out how the astronomer forged groundbreaking theories on the universe while gradually becoming blind, a historian said Monday.

Scientists at Florence's Institute and Museum of the History of Science want to exhume the body of 17th Century astronomer Galileo Galilei to find out exactly what he could see through his telescope.

The Italian astronomer -- who built on the work of predecessor Nicolaus Copernicus to develop modern astronomy with the sun as the centre of the universe -- had a degenerative eye disease that eventually left him blind.

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History Corrected By 400-Year-Old Moon Map

(Click The Image To Enlarge)

Thomas Harriot's map of the whole Moon, made after looking through an early telescope. This image accurately depicts many lunar features including the principal Maria (lunar 'seas' - actually lava-filled basins) and craters. Labelled features include Mare Crisium ('18') on the right hand side and the craters Copernicus ('b') and Kepler ('c') in the upper left of the disk. Credit: © Lord Egremont

From Live Science:

Galileo Galilei is often credited with being the first person to look through a telescope and make drawings of the celestial objects he observed. While the Italian indeed was a pioneer in this realm, he was not the first.

Englishman Thomas Harriot made the first drawing of the moon after looking through a telescope several months before Galileo, in July 1609.

Historian Allan Chapman of the University of Oxford details that 400-year-old breakthrough in astronomy in the February 2009 edition of Astronomy and Geophysics, a journal of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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Christmas Star Mystery Continues

The fabled Star of Bethlehem (shown above in a conceptual photo) may have been a series of events with great meaning for ancient skywatchers or a single planetary conjunction, astronomers suggest. Photograph by Thomas Nebbia/NGS

From National Geographic:

In the Bible, a celestial beacon now known as the Star of Bethlehem led the Magi, or wise men, to Jesus's manger.

Astronomers have been debating for centuries whether the star existed and, if so, what it might have been. Comets, meteor showers, and supernovae have all been proposed, but in recent years two main theories have come to dominate the discussion.

The first relates to a singular planetary gathering, or conjunction, of the bright planets Venus and Jupiter. A particularly striking conjunction occurred in June 17, 2 B.C.

It makes for a probable Christmas star, some astronomers say, because the two bright planets appeared so close in the evening sky that they would have seemed to merge.

"There is no doubt that for skywatchers at the time it looked like a massive, single starlike object in the western evening sky," said Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California.

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Einstein's long-lost telescope goes on display after being restored

In this undated photo made available by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on Monday, Sept. 22, 2008, an unidentified man adjusts a telescope that once belonged to Albert Einstein, at the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Hebrew University in Jerusalem, HO

From CNews/Science:

JERUSALEM - Albert Einstein's long-lost telescope, forgotten for decades in a Jerusalem storage shed, goes on display this week after three years and $10,000 spent restoring the relic.

The old reflecting telescope is cumbersome by modern standards, but a demonstration for The Associated Press showed it still works well enough to see five of Jupiter's moons and stripes on the surface of the huge planet.

The legendary physicist who famously theorized relations among energy, speed and mass received the telescope in 1954, the year before he died.

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Who Discovered The Telescope?

Controversy Over Telescope Origin -- BBC Science

New evidence suggests the telescope may have been invented in Spain, not the Netherlands or Italy as has previously been assumed.

The findings, outlined in the magazine History Today, suggest the telescope's creator could have been a spectacle-maker based in Gerona, Spain.

The first refracting telescopes were thought to have appeared in the Netherlands in 1608.

But the first examples may actually have been made for Spanish merchants.

The inventor, according to historian Nick Pelling, could have been a man called Juan Roget, who died between 1617 and 1624.

The idea subsequently travelled north to the Netherlands, where, in 1608, three separate individuals claimed the invention as their own.

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