GALILEO'S TELESCOPE

Evening Star, Issue 23686, 20 September 1940, Page 3

GALILEO'S TELESCOPE

Dr Ellery Hale, the American astronomer who founded the Mount Wilson Observatory under the clear skies of California, has an interesting story to tell in a new book -which describes the world’s biggest telescope, and is entitled the Glass Giant of Palomar. Some years ago Dr Hale and his friend, Mr Janies Breasted, went to Florence, where Galileo’s telescope, the first used in astronomy, is treasured in the museum. Greatly daring, they obtained permission to use it, and when night came, with Jupiter high in the heavens, they turned the ancient telescope on the planet, even as Galileo himself had done, and shared with the dead scientist the excitement of seeing Jupiter’s four moons through the telescope he himself had fashioned. Dr Hale tells us how he turned away and lowered his head after thus seeing the satellites. “Wo should fool very humble, Jim,” he said to his friend. It was in 1610 that Galileo first reported the moons of Jupiter, the curious appearance of the rings of Saturn, and the astonishing spots on the sun. It was ;in 16J2 that, having published his conclusions in a hook, he was summoned to Rome and compelled to recant the doctrine that the earth moved round the sun, as originally proclaimed hy Copernicus.