Galileo's Siderius Nuncius Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Galileo's Siderius Nuncius - Essay Example k became a sensation that made Galileo famous and well-known in his time, as well as initiating further discoveries of how celestial bodies such as the rocky planets, the Earth’s moon, Jupiter and its satellites, the Sun’s spots as well as discovering larger numbers of stars in constellations such as Orion and the Pleiades that cannot be easily seen by naked eyes through a compound telescope (13). While Galileo’s discoveries stirred controversy with the Catholic Church by disproving the scriptures regarding how planets, the sun, and other celestial bodies orbit the Earth, his method of observing the movement of planets with satellites, mainly Jupiter and its four moons allowed for the support of the Copernican theory of planetary movement, and initialising the disproving of the traditionally-accepted Aristotelian theory of a geocentric view of the cosmos. Galileo reported his initial observations of three bright bodies around the planet Jupiter, which he noticed to change positions in the course of a few months, from January to March of 1610, but remarkably remained in a straight line all throughout the time of observation (64). He begun observing the large planet around early January, wherein he records the appearance of three bright stars orbiting around Jupiter, but do not have similar sizes, and in which Galileo describes as such: â€Å"the more eastern one and the western one appeared a bit larger than the remaining one† (65). After a few days, Galileo observed another star which was hidden behind Jupiter, emerging and trailing in a straight line along the other three stars that were initially discovered a few days prior, in which Galileo describes the alignment to be similar to the alignment of the zodiac constellations (66). After observing Jupiter and its Medicean stars (later found out to be its satellites or moons) f or a period of three months, Galileo was able to compare the stars’ orbit to the Earth’s and Mars’ moons, which change phases at