Great Astronomers - Scopin' it out...

It's difficult to see how a thread like this could leave
out so many great astronomers. But they're not *really*
being left out, are they. Some people like to pick out
astronomers from the past, or maybe some of them
from the present times, and say, "This was the greatest
astronomer who ever lived!" So they expect their
favorite astronomers to be listed in a thread like this.

While i intend to get around to all the great astronomers
sooner or later, so your particular favorite will be listed
eventually, there is nothing stopping you from telling your
own story about why you think a particular astronomer is
great, or even the greatest astronomer ever. So you can
either post your thoughts to this thread, or you can start
your own thread!

Tycho's been listed already, and then there's Kepler and
Hubble and many others. You can always run a search
on any astronomer, or on "great astronomers" in general,
if you can't wait for me to get around to them. Here's
one whom i think is the greatest astronomer who ever
walked the face of the Earth. For my money, there's no
mistaking this. His name's Galileo Galilei, better known
to most people as just "Galileo".

He heard about a device called a telescope and built his
own version. Galileo then trained his scope on the Sun,
on Venus, on Jupiter, on Selene (the Moon) and on many
other sky objects.

On the Sun, Galileo was the first to see sunspots. The
Church of which he was a member didn't like this. All
things in the "heavens" were supposed to be "perfect",
and this did not allow for sunspots. So right off the bat
he was in big trouble!

He also studied the Moon extensively, and while scoping
out Jupiter he found four bright little dots which always
stayed very close to the bright Jovian wanderer. This got
ol' Galileo in even more trouble, because the Church was
not too receptive to the idea of little lights going around
or orbiting other lights in the sky. All things in the sky
were supposed to be going around the Earth. Eventually,
these four little dots around Jupiter came to be known as
the "Galilean satellites", after the master himself !

But perhaps Galileo's greatest victory for humanity came
when he studied planet Venus. This study was extremely
tedious because, at the time, cloudy weather kept getting
in the way of his vision. All his work and patience paid
off though, since it showed that Venus had phases, like the
Moon! When you think about it, the only way this could
happen would be if Venus orbited the Sun, and orbited it
closer than Earth did.

Why is this important? Because most people back then
thought that Venus (and everything else in the sky for that
matter) orbited Earth (called the "geocentric theory").
There had been a tiny few even since the times of the
ancient Greeks who thought that the Sun was the center
of everything, and this "heliocentric" theory gained a few
more followers thanks to another great astronomer
named Copernicus.

It was Galileo who was able to actually "see" that this
was true by using his telescope. But that was just the
beginning of his major problems and troubles with his
Church, and with the Pope himself...

http://galileo.rice.edu/

Enjoy !

Indelibly yours,
Paine