A Siderial Message ~ Galileo Galilei (1610) Dedication ~ To the most Serene Cosimo dé Medici Il, Fourth Grabduke of Tuscany Noble and truly Publicspirited was the intention of those who determined to protect from envy that great achievements of men of outstanding virtue and to rescue their names, which deserve inmortaity, form neglect and oblivion. For no sooner had the immortal greatness of your mind begun to shine on Earth than bright starts presented themselves in teh heavens like tongues to tell and celebrate you surpassing virtues forall time. have discovered those stars that were unknown to all astronomers before me, I have the right to call them by the most august name of yoru family ‘Written in Padua. ‘An astronomical message All this was found and observed a few days ago with a spyglass that I devised after having been enlightened by divine grace. How he manages to create the spyglass (telescope): Basing myself on the theory of refraction, I first got a tube ‘of lead, and fitted the ends with two lenses that were both plane on one side but, on the other side, convex in ‘one case, and concave in the other. I then applied my eye to the concave lens, and concabe in the order. I then applied my eye to the concave lens, and saw objects as fairly large and near at hand...Then I constructed a better instrument that made objects appear sixty times bigger. ‘The surface of the moon is not even and perfectly spherical, it is rough and uneven and coverred with cavities and protuberances just like the face of the Earth Near the centre of the moon there isa cavity that is larger than all the other ones and perfectly round in shape. From afar, the eye will not be able to distinguish the peaks from the depressions because the intervals between the mountains lying along one circle, namely along the same range, will be hidden by the interposition of yet‘other peaks on yet other ranges. This will be especially true, if the observer is placed along the same straight line as the summits of the peaks. This happens on Earth when the summits of several mountains are so close together they appear to lie on the same pace surface for an observer located at some distance and at the same altitude ‘There is around the moon a dense substance as around the earth ‘Mountains on the moon are higher than on Earth ‘This wonderful brightness of the moon has made philosophers marvel about the explanation . Without doubt, this brightness is due to the way the rays ofthe Sun just graze some denser region that surrounds the Moon, ‘When the Moon is between the Earth and the Sun, as happens at new moon, the rays of the Sun illuminate the side of its hemisphere that is turned away from the Earth For the Galaxy is nothing else but a collection of innumerable stars heaped (apiladas) together. ‘On the 17 of January of 1610 at the first hour of the night he sees 3 little stars sorounding Jupiter. I thought there were fixed stars but when I look back they had different arrengement ‘There were 4 wondering stars around Jupiter (one of this was a fixed star) ‘We have a particular strong argument to remove scruples of those who are willing to examine dispassionately the revolution of the planets about the sUn in the Copernican system