Galileo’s first crude telescope only magnified objects a few times, barely enough to change their appearance. Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection, Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Line engraving by Boutrois & Jouannin after J. Galileo sets his telescopic sights on Jupiter This line engraving of Galileo depicts the astronomer alongside a drawing that shows Earth’s orbit around the Sun, as well as the Moon’s orbit around Earth. With great eagerness, he swung his new and improved telescope toward it, curious to learn what he would see. To the brilliant Moon’s upper-right, he saw a blue-white star, brighter by far than any of the stars around it.Īs a scholar of science who was familiar with the sky and its workings, Galileo knew that this point of light was no star it was the planet Jupiter. That man was scientist, inventor, and visionary Galileo Galilei.Īs darkness fell over Padua, Galileo gazed out over the city rooftops to the east to where the constellation Orion, and above it, a nearly Full Moon, were on the rise. 7, 1610, none of them could have known that somewhere in their beautiful city, standing on a balcony high above them, a man was preparing to not only make history, but transform our very understanding of our place in the universe. GillĪs the citizens of Padua, Italy, watched the Sun set on the evening of Jan. Moons: NASA/JPL/Galileo Jupiter: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute Image data processing and layout: Kevin M. From bottom to top is Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. But new research suggests a promising pathway for how they may have formed. The origins of Jupiter's Galilean moons is a long-standing mystery.
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