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GALILEO'S TELESCOPE, 400 YEARS ON

One day in 1609, Galileo raised a telescope to the heavens and began to change the world. As a good Catholic, Galileo thanked God that he was “the first observer of marvels kept hidden in obscurity for all previous centuries”. In fact, Galileo wasn’t the first human being to turn a telescope on the heavens—the English astronomer Thomas Harriot probably has that distinction—but he was the first to realise what he was looking at.

And now, 400 years later, the 100 Hours of Astronomy project is encouraging as many of us as possible, across the world, to celebrate this historic event by looking through a telescope and recording what we see there. In 1609, Galileo saw that the moon had mountains and valleys; a year later, using an improved instrument, and in the space of a week, he discovered the four moons of Jupiter. Singlehandedly, he overthrew an old and persistent orthodoxy. The heavens are not separate from us as the ancients had thought: they are made of the same stuff, obeying the same laws of nature. In this moment we began to trust technology to extend the reach of our senses. It has been doing so ever since, in a lasting revolution that after 400 years is still in its early days.

~ CHRISTOPHER POTTER

100 Hours of Astronomy  April 2nd-5th

Picture credit: Kevin (via Flickr)