Galileo Galilei, born February 15, 1564, a renowned physicist, engineer, philosopher, and mathematician, invented an improved version of the optical telescope in 1610. Galileo was not the first to invent an optical telescope, an object used to …show more content…
The man has allegedly discovered stars orbiting Jupiter, ah, what blasphemous rumors!
Corresponding to Aristotelian principles, the Moon is above Earth, dwelling in the heavens, and therefore, must be impeccable. Though, Galileo found the Moon to be “uneven, rough, and crowded with depressions and bulges.” He depicted the Moon as “like the face of the Earth itself, which is marked here and there with chains of mountains and depths of valleys.” He goes on to illustrate his further observations.
In 1616, the Catholic Church placed De Revolutionibus, an argument for a heliocentric, or sun centered universe, by Nicolas Copernicus, on it’s index of banned books. Pope Paul V then summoned Galileo to Rome, there, he advised him to no longer support Copernicus and his theories, which Galileo had previously admired. Unfortunately, Galileo did not take to such advice, and upon the publication of Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in 1632, advocating heliocentrism, he infuriated the Catholic