Galileo's Original Telescope at the Franklin Institute

We visited the Franklin Institute on Sunday so that I could see an original Galileo telescope that he made and used to make his discoveries of the moons of Jupiter, mountains on the moon, and even seeing some hint of the rings of Saturn. This is the International Year of Astronomy in honor of the 400th anniversary of Galileo being the first to turn a telescope to the skies and record his observations.

The telescope he used looks very plain, I suppose because it was early effort and a working instrument. Galileo wrote a note of the device's magnification on one end. You can see the writing in the next photo.


Galileo did make nicer telescopes as gifts for his patrons, such as the Grand Duke of Tuscany, but they only had a replica of one at the Franklin Institute. It is famous however for appearing with Derick Pitts, the chief astronomer of the Franklin Institute when he was on the Colbert Report.

Galileo made many more observations after 1609, one collection of famous ones from March 1st, 1613 to May 8th was published “Istoria e Dimostrazioni intorno alle Macchie Solari” (”The Sunspot Letters to Marc Welser”).

Massimo Mogi Vicentini took the manuscript and the observations of Jupiter's moons and turned it into a nice animation.

(video link found via Strange Paths, videos at Mogi-Vice, pictures of the telescope were taken by me without a flash, to not damage the exhibits, but against the rules, I did get caught by the guards and had to stop)

The Jupiter, Venus and Moon Show

Howard reminded me that tonight is a rare conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and the Moon tonight. I needed a tripod to get the shot because my hands are so shaky. This half second exposure taken at 6:30pm washes out the moon a little but lets you see the planets better. Venus is the bright dot at the bottom and Jupiter is the less bright dot on the right. I was afraid I would miss it because of the rain earlier this evening, but the rain stopped and the clouds moved away sufficiently. What really stopped my observations was the setting of these three into the treeline.

I wonder what myth that the Romans or Greeks could spin out of a conjunction of the love goddess Venus(Aphrodite) and a moon goddess, Luna (Selene) or Diana (Artemis) who replaced her, take your pick, with Jupiter (Zeus) the king of the Gods. Jupiter stories usually picture him chasing women so I am sure it would be interesting. Zeus had a child with Selene in the Homeric myths, but Artemis is Zeus daughter, and sworn to virginity. Venus is also a daughter of Jupiter but she is all about love. Probably it would be a myth about an argument.