Not only up there.


It was on this day, almost 400 years ago, in 1609, that Galileo Galilei, working from what must have been his balcony window in Padua, made a first drawing of the moon. This may not have been the date on which he first gazed at the moon via his telescope, but it was through that gazing that he prepared his first drawings. He noted that the face of the moon was smooth but filled with irregularities, a conclusion that contradicted the Aristotelian assumption that the heavenly bodies were perfect spheres.

It's reported that over the next eighteen days Galileo made at least five more drawings. From these he made watercolor sketches, and these were later engraved in the print edition of the Starry Messenger that was published in March of 1610. Having relatively accurate drawings of the moon that we could hold in our hands, rather than just observing it from afar in the night sky, contributed greatly, of course, to the advancement of astronomy. Whether it changed the way we relate to the moon, however, is a totally different question.



Go to: To hold in our hands.