Exploring Space: Images from NASA

Facts which at first seem improbable will,
even on scant explanation,
drop the cloak which has hidden them
and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.

Galileo

Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)
First Day
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Galileo was a well-known math professor at the University of Padua when he learned about an interesting discovery.

In 1608, someone in the Netherlands (most likely Hans Lipperhey, an optician) had invented a device which Lipperhey described (in his patent application)  as “an instrument for looking into the distance.” We know that “instrument” as a telescope - from the Greek words tele [“far”] and scopeo [“I see"].

Fascinated with the device, Galileo  improved  the original design - ultimately magnifying by twenty-one times what could be seen through the glass - and showed it to a group of lawmakers in Venice. Then he did something unusual: He turned his new telescope up - toward the sky.

What he saw forever changed  how mankind views the heavens.