GALILEI, Galileo.

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Sidereus nuncius First edition, one of 550 copies, announcing the first astronomical discoveries made through a telescope. Sidereus nuncius describes the rough and mountainous surface of the Moon, the clusters of stars composing the Milky Way, and the satellites of Jupiter. A cornerstone of the Scientific Revolution, it provided the first concrete evidence that the Ptolemaic system of the universe was inaccurate.Galileo built his first telescope (perspicillum) in early 1609, improving Hans Lippershey's model. By August of that year, he had refined the magnification to 30-times, and around November or December he turned the instrument to the night sky. Sidereus nuncius was rushed through print in March 1610 and caused a sensation in the European learned community. Two other editions appeared later in the same year: an octavo reprint in Frankfurt by Kepler (a major supporter of Galileo) and an unauthorized edition in Florence. Observing the Moon, Galileo found that it was not smooth and perfect as the heavenly bodies described by Aristotle. He studied the terminator (the line separating lunar day from night) and estimated the height and depths of the satellite's physical features. The lunar engravings, based on his original drawings, are the first printed realistic images of the satellite, breaking with the prevailing tradition in astronomical illustration, which relied on diagrams. Galileo detected at least ten times more stars than are visible to the naked eye, finding that t

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