Father Sky

Perhaps in honor of the 400 year anniversary of the first publicised use of the telescope, I picked up a translated copy of “Sidereus Nuncius, or, The Sidereal Messenger” by Galileo Galilei. This copy has been translated with a number of notes by Albert Van Helden. It’s a short, fascinating read which I hope to delve into in subsequent posts, but for now I just had to share one impression that I felt noteworthy.

As the subtitle to my blog implies, whenever time allows I am either researching or contemplating ethnoastronomy. Often in my research I bump in to star charts drawn by various groups such as the Pawnee Star Chart. Usually, wrong conclusions are drawn from these charts because they do not precisely depict real star patterns in our night sky.

Well, take a look at this sketch of the moon by Galileo (on the left, with actual moon photo to the right):

As you can see he’s captured much of the essence of the moon, yet you really can’t say it’s an accurate “map”.

But that wasn’t his intention. With one look through his telescope, Galileo knew the cosmology of Aristotle was wrong. The perfection of the heavens was just a theory and this was the first piece of evidence that the prevailing theory of the day was incorrect. The moon, like all of the heavenly bodies, was suppose to be “perfect”, that is, perfectly smooth, perfectly round and travel in perfect circles.

Galileo was fully aware of his challenge. He needed to make his sketches emphasize the imperfections of the moon… even exaggerate features to clearly show it is not the smooth sphere that everyone believed.

Perhaps it is no accident he titled his first book, The Sidereal Message, (yes, the latin Nuncius can either mean “message” or “messenger”. perhaps Galileo meant message?). He was sending a message that we needed to change our view of the world.

Now what do you suppose the message was for the Pawnee (and others) with their star charts?

(photo from Wikimedia Commons)