Exploring Space: Images from NASA - Preface
First Chapter
In April of 2013, NASA released this amazingly detailed image of the Horsehead Nebula—which Hubble took in infrared light—to celebrate the 23rd anniversary of Hubble's launch. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STSci / AURA). Online, courtesy 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.
First Day (Scroll down 10%)
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.
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