Eyes to the sky with new telescope
Prior to the reinvention of the telescope by Galileo Galilei, the night sky was speckled by thousands of stars. Galileo wasn't satisfied, however, and thought there was more to the world above. So with a lot of hard-work, Galilei developed a telescope that allowed the viewer to see double the stars in the night sky.
In order to do this, Galilei consulted with Marc'Antonio Mazzoleni, a well known artisan, so that he may design a telescope with magnificent magnification. After some |
tweaking with glass lenses, Galilei successfully went from three to four times magnification to nine times magnification.
Proud of his work, Galilei set off to Venice to showcase his new telescope to the University of Padua. The university was so impressed they offered him a life-time contract to teach there and gave him an increase in pay. Though others were thoroughly impressed, Galileo Galilei continued to grind lenses until he obtained a whopping twenty times magnification. Once he achieved this, Galilei took to the stars to discover what else was out there. |
Two months of diligently observing the night sky this is what Galilei has found: 1) The moon, contrary to past belief, is actually rough rather than smooth.Galileo observed the moon for the whole month of November of 1609 and found that the surface of the moon is |
almost completely covered with craters.
2) Galileo also proved Copernicus' theory that the Earth revolves around the sun instead of vice versa. This particular discovery was quite controversial with several religious institutions, but the Pope himself saw believed Galileo. 3) The final thing Galileo discovered was that the planet Jupiter had several (four) moons. These moons in the past years have come to be called the Galilean Moons. Overall, Galileo Galilei's new telescope has brought us a world of new discoveries. |