{"id":32,"date":"2007-09-12T10:33:28","date_gmt":"2007-09-12T15:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/12\/sidereus-nuncius\/"},"modified":"2007-09-12T10:34:30","modified_gmt":"2007-09-12T15:34:30","slug":"sidereus-nuncius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/12\/sidereus-nuncius\/","title":{"rendered":"Sidereus Nuncius"},"content":{"rendered":"

The book Sidereus Nuncius<\/em>, or Starry Messenger<\/em> was published by Galileo Galilei in March 1610.\u00a0 In it he records his first views of the heavens through a telescope.\u00a0 This is one of the great scientific publications that changed the world.\u00a0 Galileo’s excitement is palpable as he describes\u00a0the craters on the moon, a myriad of countless stars and his discovery of the four orbiting moons of Jupiter.<\/p>\n

Prior to this time, people could\u00a0view the night sky only with their unaided eyes.\u00a0 They thought the moon’s surface\u00a0was smooth and perfect.\u00a0 He was first to describe craters and correctly deduce\u00a0the mountains, valleys and “seas” of the moon.\u00a0 Likewise the night sky appears to have only a fixed number of stars.\u00a0 But with a telescope these were resolved into countless numbers of individual stars.<\/p>\n

When he turned his telescope towards Jupiter, he was amazed to find four tiny “stars” that revolved around the planet.\u00a0 I will never forget when as a youngster, I turned my new telescope toward Jupiter.\u00a0 Upon seeing the four moons, I experienced that same magical excitement that Galileo could hardly contain in his writing.\u00a0 I stared transfixed by the sight, almost wanting to\u00a0see those satellites move.\u00a0 They do move of course, but it\u00a0takes a few hours to notice any appreciable change in\u00a0position.<\/p>\n

Galileo first looked at Jupiter on January 7, 1610.\u00a0 Merely three months later he had published his book Sidereus Nuncius<\/em>.\u00a0 It’s an amazingly short period of time to make these observations, come up with\u00a0theories about what he saw and make detailed measurements and drawings.\u00a0 Again it shows his excitement and motivation to make these discoveries known to the world.<\/p>\n

I have an interest in computational astronomy.\u00a0 It is fun to plot the relative positions of Jupiter’s satellites with a computer program.\u00a0 I can recreate their positions as they appeared on those nights in 1610.\u00a0 It’s exciting to see they match Galileo’s sketches.\u00a0 It’s a connection to the past, and a way of sharing the excitement of a great moment in history.<\/p>\n

Digitized images of the original publication are available at the Linda Hall Library:\u00a0 http:\/\/www.lindahall.org\/services\/digital\/index.shtml<\/a>.\u00a0 You can view the\u00a0illustrations, which presumably are woodcuts based on Galileo’s original drawings.<\/p>\n

Edward Stafford Carlos published an English\u00a0translation of the work in 1880.\u00a0 It’s available to view at Google Books:\u00a0 http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=IDQDAAAAQAAJ<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The book Sidereus Nuncius, or Starry Messenger was published by Galileo Galilei in March 1610.\u00a0 In it he records his first views of the heavens through a telescope.\u00a0 This is one of the great scientific publications that changed the world.\u00a0 Galileo’s excitement is palpable as he describes\u00a0the craters on the moon, a myriad of countless … Continue reading “Sidereus Nuncius”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}