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Sidereus Nuncius

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	Topics Sidereus Nuncius Topic Home *Sidereus Nuncius* (usually translated into EnglishEnglish language English is a widely distributed language that originated in England but is now the primary language in numerous countries.... as Sidereal Messenger, although Starry Messenger and Sidereal Message are also seen) is a short treatise published in LatinLatin Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome.... by Galileo GalileiGalileo Galilei Galileo Galilei was an Italian physicist, astronomer, astrologer and philosopher who is closely associated with the scienti... in March 1610. It was the first scientific treatise based on observations made through a telescopeTelescope The word "telescope" usually refers to optical telescopes, but there are telescopes for most of the spectrum of electromagne... . It contains the results of Galileo's early observations of the MoonMoon Summary The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite.... , the starStar A star is a massive, compact body of plasma in outer space that is held together by its own gravity and, unlike a planet, is... s, and the moons of Jupiter. In his observations of the Moon, Galileo observed that the line separating lunar day from night (the terminator) was smooth where it crossed the darker regions of the moon, but quite irregular where it crossed the brighter areas. From this observation, he deduced that the darker regions are flat, low-lying areas, while the brighter regions are rough and covered with mountains. Based on the distance of sunlit mountaintops from the terminator, he estimated that the lunar mountains were at least 4 miles in height. This contradicted AristoteleanAristotle Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great.... cosmology, which held that since the heavens were more perfect than the earth, the heavenly bodies must be perfectly smooth spheres. In observing the stars, Galileo reported that he saw at least 10 times as many stars through the telescope as with the naked eye, and he published star charts of the belt of OrionOrion (constellation) Orion, a constellation often referred to as The Hunter, is a prominent constellation, perhaps the best-known and most co... and the PleiadesPleiades (star cluster) The Pleiades is an open cluster in the constellation of Taurus.... showing some of the newly observed stars. Also, when he observed some of the "nebulous" stars in the PtolemaicPtolemy Claudius Ptolemaeus , known in English as Ptolemy, was a Greek-speaking geographer, astronomer, and astrologer who liv... star catalogue, he saw that rather than being cloudy, they were made of many small stars. From this, he deduced that the nebulae, and the Milky WayMilky Way The Milky Way , is a barred spiral galaxy which forms part of the Local Group.... itself, were collections of stars too small and close to be resolved into individual stars by the naked eye. In the last portion of Sidereus Nuncius, Galileo reported his discovery of four objects that appeared to form a straight line of stars near Jupiter. He gave illustrations of the relative positions of Jupiter and its moons as they appeared nightly from late January through early March of 1610. From the fact that they changed their relative positions from night to night, but always appeared in the same straight line near Jupiter, he deduced that they were four bodies in orbit around Jupiter. At the time of its publication, Galileo was a mathematician at the University of PaduaPadua Overview The city of Padua, Italy, is the economic and communications hub of the Veneto region in northern Italy.... , and he had recently received a lifetime contract for his work at building more powerful telescopes. He desired to return to FlorenceFlorence Florence is the capital city of the region of Tuscany, Italy.... , and in hopes of gaining patronage there, he dedicated Sidereus Nuncius to Cosimo II de' Medici, fourth Grand Duke of Tuscany, and he named the four moons of Jupiter he had discovered the "Medicean stars." Since then, his effort at naming the moons has failed, for today they are referred to as the Galilean moonsGalilean moons The Galilean moons are the four moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo Galilei.... . Albert Van Helden, professor of history at Rice UniversityFacts About Rice University William Marsh Rice University, commonly called Rice University and opened in 1912 as Rice Institute, is one of t... , published an English translation of the Sidereus Nuncius in 1989 (ISBN 978-0226279039). External links 1610. From Rare Book RoomRare Book Room Rare Book Room is an educational website for the repository of digitally scanned rare books made freely available to the pub... . Scanned first edition. , in Latin, HTML format. From LiberLiber.