Mountains on the Moon

Abstract

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was born in Pisa. As a young boy he attended a monastery school, where he studied Latin classics and Greek. He went on to study medicine and mathematics at the University of Pisa, but left without a degree due to lack of funds. After this, he spent a few years doing private teaching and independent research, then went on to serve as a lecturer at the University of Pisa before he was appointed to chair of mathematics at the University of Padua in 1591. It was here that he carried out the work which would be published in 1610 under the title Sidereus Nuncius—the sidereal, or starry, messenger. The following text selections were translated from the latin text of Galileo’s Sidereal Messenger by Edward Stafford Carlos in 1880 and revised by Maurice A. Finocchiaro in 2008. Galileo’s sketches of the moon, contained herein, have been kindly provided by the History of Hydraulics Rare Book Collection which is maintained by the IIHR at the University of Iowa. Galileo begins this text by describing the spyglass—or telescope—with which his ground-breaking observations were made possible.

It is most beautiful and pleasing to the eye to look upon the lunar body, distant from us about sixty terrestrial diameters, from so near as if it were distant by only two of these measures.

—Galileo Galilei