Renaissance · Europe · Science

1610

Sidereus Nuncius Published

March 1610

Galileo rushed his telescopic discoveries into print as The Starry Messenger, a sixty-page pamphlet in Latin. The moon was cratered, the Milky Way a sea of stars, Jupiter had satellites. Europe read the slim volume in weeks. Natural philosophy would never recover its ancient certainties, and every astronomer with access to a telescope rushed to confirm or deny the findings.