Things were not going well for Giadorno Bruno. Bruno had been a soldier and became a Dominican, His problems began in 1576. He had expressed the belief that the universe was very big, the stars were suns, like ours, and those other suns had worlds similar to ours and they were all inhabited by intelligent beings. This idea wasn’t something Bruno had thought up by himself. It had been around for almost 300 years. However there was no scripture to be found, or even hint, that this was true and so to profess a belief that wasn’t backed by scripture made Bruno a heretic and " a person of interest" to the Inquisition.
He took off his robe and ran. He traveled Europe and was cared for by supporters in different countries until he wore out his welcome. He seemed to be about as good at getting help as he was at wearing out his welcome and soon had no place left to go. What he did next must have amazed everyone. He went to the offices of the Inquisition, who imprisoned him for eight years. Then in 1600 he was burned at the stake, the fate of a heretic. Welcome to the seventeenth century.
In 1608 a Dutch eye glass maker named Hans Lipperhey invented what we now know as the telescope. The rest we know, Galileo got a letter from a former student describing this amazing new discovery and made one himself, several actually. In 1609 he turned the first one he made toward the sky and wrote about the things he saw in a little book Sidereus Nuncius, the Starry Messenger. Galileo was prudent enough to have what he wrote approved by the powers of the church first.
One of Galileo’s friends was Robert, Cardinal, Bellermine. Cardinal Bellermine was one of those who had condemmed Bruno to the fire. Fifteen years later he would write an interesting letter:
" I say that if there were a true demonstration that the Sun is at the center of the world and the Earth is in the third heaven, and that the Sun does not circle the the Earth but Earth circles the Sun, then one would have to proceed with great care in explaining scriptures that appear contrary, and say rather that we do not understand them than what is demonstrated is false." He went on to express his belief in the heliocentric system and hs faith in the scriptures to support it. However he didn’t seem so quick burn heretics anymore.
Galileo not only changed the way we think about the universe, he helped change the way we could think about the universe. It had cost him two trips to the office of the Inquisitionors and he had gotten off lightly. In 1601 the center of the universe was under your feet, because the Earth was the center of the universe. This is the way Ptolemy had described it. The Sun was 1,200 Earth radii from the Earth, or five million miles from Earth. The celestial vault of fixed stars was 20,000 Earth radii or eighty million miles from Earth. By the end of the seventeenth century the distance to the sun had been estimated as being between 82 and 87 million miles, or at a distance bigger than the entire Ptolemic universe.
Kepler had figured out the orbits of the planets, Newton had figured out why they moved in those orbits. Romer had discovered that light had speed and made an estimate of that speed of 144,000 miles per second. Cassini had found that Saturn had an inner and an outter ring and that there was a gap between them, and that the radius of Saturn’s orbit was 800 million miles. Saturn, the last known planet at that time, was on the edge of the Solar System. Yes, they now understood that Earth was a planet in a solar system.
Galileo was first to look at the sky with a telescope by one night. It is hard for me to imagine the course events might have taken if the other fellow had been first and there had been no Galileo.
December Sky:
01 The crescent Moon,Jupiter and Venus form a triangle in the southwestern sky at sunset.
03 Neptune is just south of the Moon around 9p.m. CST.
05 First quarter Moon.
06 Uranus is 4deg south of the Moon 3a.m. CST.
12 Full Moon
13 Geminid meteor shower peaks.
18 Saturn is 6deg south of the Moon 9p.m. CST.
19 Last quarter Moon. Winter solstice occurs at 604a.m. CST.
22 Ursid meteor shower peaks
25 The Moon will graze Antares 1a.m. CST.
27 New Moon
28 Mercury will be south of the Moon, with in 45sec, 10p.m. CST.
29 The Moon moves just south of Jupiter, by about 35sec 3a.m. CST.
30 Jupiter 2deg North of Venus 7p.m. CST.
31 Mercury passes south of Jupiter Midnight CST. The Moon north of Neptune by about 1.7deg.
The Moon will pass north of Venus 3p.m. CST.
