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Galileo Galilei, a Great Contributor Towards Knowledge About Astronomy
Galileo was a very intelligent man who discovered many things, which changed the knowledge of astronomy. He was born in Pisa, Italy on the date of February 15, 1564. On August 25, 1609, he demonstrated his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers. He published his initial telescopic astronomical observations in March 1610 in a brief treatise entitled Sidereus Nuncius. On January 7, 1610 Galileo observed with his telescope what he described at the time as three fixed stars, totally invisible by their smallness, all close to Jupiter, and lying on a straight line through it. Observations on subsequent nights showed that the positions of these stars relative to Jupiter were changing in a way that would have been inexplicable if they had really been fixed stars. On January 10, 1610 Galileo noted that one of them had disappeared, an observation which he said because one of them was hidden behind Jupiter. Within a few days he concluded that they were orbiting Jupiter. He had discovered three of Jupiter's four large moons Io, Europa, and Callisto. He discovered the fourth, Ganymede, on January 13. Galileo named the four satellites he had discovered Medicean stars, in honour of his future patron, Cosimo II de' Medici. Later astronomers, however, renamed them the Galilean satellites in honour of Galileo himself. Galileo also observed the planet Saturn, and at first mistook its rings for planets, thinking it was a three-bodied system. When he observed the planet later, Saturn's rings were directly oriented at Earth, causing him to think that two of the bodies had disappeared. The rings reappeared when he observed the planet in 1616, further confusing him. Galileo was the first to report lunar mountains and craters, whose existence he deduced from the patterns of light and shadow on the Moon's surface. He even estimated the mountains' heights from these observations. This led him to the conclusion that the Moon was rough and uneven, and just like the surface of the Earth itself, rather than a perfect sphere as Aristotle had claimed. Unfortunately, he died on January 8, 1642. Galileo influenced people’s worldviews in geography and knowledge. He proved things like the earth orbits the sun and he discovered Jupiter’s moons. This changed how people thought about outer space and the things out there. Galileo was a great astronomer and he will never be forgotton.
This is a portrait of Galileo Galilei
This is a picture of Galileo using his telescope
Tihs is the page that Galileo first noted Jupiters moons
