Galileo sketches of faint stars |
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Sketches of faint stars in the Orion constellation,
as seen by Galileo through his telescope. The larger stars
with a central dots are those visible to the naked eye,
with the topmost three corresponding to the so-called belt
of Orion. That the universe contained many more stars than
previously known gave moral support to the idea that it may
also be a lot larger than assumed up to then. This idea had
been advanced by
Copernicus himself, as a possible explanation
for the lack of observed annual parallax in the fixed stars.
Reproduced from Galileo's 1610
Sidereus Nuncius
Bibliography:Galileo, G. 1610, Sidereus Nuncius, trans. A. Van Helden 1989, The University of Chicago Press.
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