Download GALILEO

GALILEO
from Pioneer
Astronomers
By Navin Sullivan
Vocabulary- Galileo
• Apparatus- a piece of equipment that has
a particular use
• Extraordinary- unusual or amazing
• Constellation-group of stars that form
shapes in the sky
• Celestial- relating to the sky
• Interrogation- questioning
Spelling Words
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Scrape
Favor
Layer
Great
Stale
Praise
Sleigh
Reins
Danger
Hasty
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Neighbor
Daily
Straight
Eight
Explain
Sailors
Wavy
Crazy
Amazed
bathed
Galileo heard from his
neighboring pupil
• Galileo Galilei lived in Italy and was a professor
of Mathmatics in 1609.
He heard from Paris about a great device that
was called a Dutch cylinder or Dutch
Perspective. He hastily assembled the materials
to make his own Perspective or telescope
• This straight tube used a concave lens and a
convex lens to make objects far away seem
larger- sort of like eyeglass lenses
He was very excited
• Galileo began to re- make the apparatus
as it had been described
• He realized it had extraordinary potential
to the scientists of the world
• He got a tube of lead and made a crude
telescope. Later he used a tube of wood
• He knew that this tube could make him a
lot of money, praise and help the world
He could see very far away
• His new invention could be used by sailors
to spot far away ships on the horizon
• He took his invention to the Venetian
Senate and showed them how to look out
to sea
• They could see the ships and were very
happy with his new invention
• They favored him with a raise in his salary
Galileo knew he could
also look out at the stars
• He increased the magnification of the telescope
to 30 times the size by changing the lens shape
just a little scraping of the glass
• Years earlier the entire town had seen
something great in the night sky that made them
wonder more about the stars- they had seen a
new star
• They knew finally that the sky could change and
new stars could be seen- the telescope could
help explain the stars to man
Galileo looked at the moon
• He could see the moon lit on one side by
the sun. He could tell there was a sunrise
and a sunset on the moon, like earth
• This meant that the moon rotated and also
went around the sun, just like earth
• He also saw wavy bumps and dark spots
on the surface. He then realized the moon
had mountains, just like earth
Galileo was curious
• He continued to look out at the moon and
make daily observations and calculations
about it and it’s many layers
• He wondered if there was life or air or was
it dead? How could he explain it?
• He wondered how the rest of the world
would accept his observations about
celestial bodies they feared?
He explored all of the sky
• He saw many new stars never seen before
• He saw that the constellations of Orion contained not
eight or 9 stars but 89 stars
• He saw the Milky Way was a belt of stars way too many
to count- the sky was bathed in the glow of so many
stars
• The old stale theories about the heavens were going
away
He found Jupiter
• He observed Jupiter, the largest planet
• He noted there were bright lights like stars that
moved around Jupiter
• He determined they were moons, just like earth’s
moon
• He published his findings in a book called
Messenger from the Stars
• He had told the world that the earth was just part
of a large universe of stars and other celestial
bodies
Galileo amazed everyone
• Galileo’s findings also scared many
• People praised him for his findings, but
many favored him crazy
• The church thought there was great
danger in having so much knowledge
• Galileo’s findings showed that the earth
was not the center of the universe, as
proof of Copernicus’ theories of 70
years earlier
He stated that the earth circled the
sun
• This angered the Church of Rome
• At first they warned him to keep quiet
• A new Pope was elected in 1633 and finally they held an
Inquisition and
claimed he was in
defiance of the
Church teachings
• He was an old tired man
and he decided it was
better to stay silent
• Almost 100 years later in 1728,
James Bradley finally
proved Galileo’s theories