Starry Messenger: Observing the Heavens in the Age of Galileo

In the autumn of 1609, the Italian mathematician and astronomer Galileo Galilei turned his telescope to the heavens. When, in 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius, or Starry Messenger, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler responded with enthusiasm, praising the significance of Galileo’s observations. This online exhibition reveals European observations of the heavens from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century.