Related papers: Learning from Galileo's errors

We present a new careful and comprehensive analysis the observations of the satellites of Jupiter from the Sidereus Nuncius that extends and complements previous similar studies. Each observation is compared to the predictions obtained…

After Galileo's publication of the Sidereus Nuncius in 1610, Giovanni Battista Agucchi obtained in 1611 an estimate of the orbital periods of the Galilean satellites of Jupiter using the figures published in the book. The article shows how…

What are the historical evidence concerning the turning of the spyglass into an astronomical instrument, the telescope? In Sidereus Nuncius and in his private correspondence Galileo tells the reader what he did with the telescope, but he…

In 1492, for the first time, an unknown ocean opened up before sailors: weeks of navigation and no idea how to pinpoint their location. Since ancient times, navigators had known how to determine latitude by using the North Star, but the…

In 1980 Kowal and Drake found that in December 1612 and January 1613 Galileo observed the planet Neptune. At that time, according to these authors, Galileo was able to measure angular separations with an accuracy of about 10 seconds of arc.…

Galileo Galilei had sufficient skill as an observer and instrument builder to be able to measure the positions and apparent sizes of objects seen through his telescopes to an accuracy of 2" or better. However, Galileo had no knowledge of…

With the manuscript of the Sidereus Nuncius preserved at the Biblioteca Nazionale of Florence are included 7 watercolors of the Moon painted by Galileo himself. We suggest that some of them, and in particular the drawing of the 30 Nov 1609…

Galileo determined distances to stars based on the assumption that stars were suns, the apparent sizes of stars as seen through his telescope, and basic geometry. However, the apparent sizes that he measured were the result of diffraction…

In 1614, the German astronomer Simon Mayr published his claim to have discovered the satellites of Jupiter. Writing in the treatise Mundus Jovialis, Mayr made his assertion in a convoluted but unequivocal manner, earning the displeasure of…

I offer a revisionist interpretation of Galileo's role in the history of science. My overarching thesis is that Galileo lacked technical ability in mathematics, and that this can be seen as directly explaining numerous aspects of his life's…

The question of annual stellar parallax is usually viewed as having been a "win-win situation" for seventeenth-century astronomers who subscribed to the Copernican view of universe in which the Earth orbits the Sun and the Sun is one of…

Galileo Galilei believed that stars were distant suns whose sizes, measured via his telescope, were a direct indication of distance -- fainter stars (appearing smaller in the telescope) were farther away than brighter ones. Galileo argued…

Among the first devices used to measure the time we find the sundials and the water-clocks, as told by Vitruvius in his book on the Architecture. The sundials work because of the shadows cast by a rod or pole, the gnomon, on their…

We present the results of the analysis of the GREAT (Galileo gravitational Redshift test with Eccentric sATellites) experiment from SYRTE (Observatoire de Paris), funded by the European Space Agency. An elliptic orbit induces a periodic…

The Galilean satellites' dynamics has been studied extensively during the last century. In the past it was common to use analytical expansions in order to get simple models to integrate, but with the new generation computers it became…

Great opportunities arise for teaching physics, astronomy, and their histories when new discoveries are made that involve concepts accessible to students at every level. Such an opportunity currently exists thanks to the fact that notes…

Work published in Sky and Telescope in 2004 discusses Galileo's observations of the star Mizar. These observations raise questions regarding Galileo's assumptions about the universe and the conclusions he drew from his observations. Galileo…

This paper is related to our previous works [1][2] on the error estimate of the averaging technique, for systems with one fast angular variable. In the cited references, a general method (of mixed analytical and numerical type) has been…

In 1626, the Venetian physician Santorio Santorio published the details of his pulsilogium, a stop clock that could accurately measure one's pulse rate. He applied Galileo Galilei's insights that the frequency of a pendulum's oscillation is…

The question, Did Simon Marius (1573-1625) observe Jupiter's satellites on January 8, 1610 (December 29, 1609 in the Julian calendar) is moot, for he did not disclose his research method and the instrument he used. To resolve this issue we…