Sidereus Nuncius

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Sidereus Nuncius , title page of the first edition, 1610

The book called Sidereus Nuncius was written by Galileo Galilei . She appeared in 1610 in Latin in Venice, printed in 550 copies in the Offizin of Thomas Baglioni . It was the first scientific treatise based on astronomical observations made with a telescope .

title

The word Nuncius ( classical nuntius ) in the title can be translated both as messenger and message . The title can therefore be translated as a messenger of the stars or a message from the stars .

content

The mathematician, astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei published the short treatise in Latin in March 1610 . It contains the results of Galileo's early telescope observations of the moon , the stars and the moons of Jupiter .

Telescope

Galileo used a Dutch telescope with twenty times magnification for his observations . Such telescopes are now also called Galileo telescopes. In the Sidereus Nuncius , Galileo describes how a well-functioning telescope should be built.

moon

Galileo observed that the line separating the light part of the moon from the dark part (the day-night boundary ) ran smoothly in darker regions of the moon, but irregular in lighter areas. From this he deduced that the darker regions were low-lying plains, the lighter regions were uneven and covered by mountains. Galileo's engravings of the lunar surface were the beginning of moon mapping ( selenography ). Although the drawings are so precise that they can even be used to calculate the exact date of observation, Galileo added the illustration of a non-existent large lunar crater at the day-night boundary .

Stars

Galileo's drawings of the Pleiades star cluster from the Sidereus Nuncius . Courtesy of the History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries.

Galileo reports that he could see at least ten times as many stars with a telescope than with the naked eye. His star maps of the Orion Belt and the Pleiades show some of the newly observed stars. With the naked eye, observers could only see six stars in the constellation of Taurus ; with his telescope Galileo saw thirty-five. He also reports that some of the stars referred to as “foggy” in Ptolemy's catalog of stars are composed of many small stars. He also judges that the Milky Way consists of innumerable stars that are too small and distant to be recognized as such with the naked eye.

Jupiter's moons or Medicean stars

In the last part of the Sidereus Nuncius , Galileo reports on his discovery of four objects that were in a straight line near Jupiter. On the first night he sees three small stars on a line parallel to the ecliptic; the following nights show changing arrangements and a fourth object to his gaze. From the fact that they change their position in relation to Jupiter from night to night, but always stand on the same line, Galileo concludes that there are four bodies in orbit around Jupiter. In honor of the four sons of the Medici family , he names the bodies Medici Stars .

Counterfeit

In March 2007, an alleged copy of the book with alleged original drawings by Galileo was discovered, which is said to have served as a template for the copper engravings contained in the other copies. This sensational discovery, which Horst Bredekamp recognized in a monograph in 2007 and which he and others found to be genuine, turned out to be a fake through research by historian Nick Wilding in 2011, which had been brought into the antique trade by Italian private scholar and antiquarian Marino Massimo De Caro .

expenditure

  • Galileo Galilei: Sidereus Nuncius. (News of new stars). Edited and introduced by Hans Blumenberg . 2nd Edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-518-27937-8 ( Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 337).

literature

  • Cornelia Liesenfeld: Galileo's astronomy and its relevance today and tomorrow , Augsburger Schriften zu Theologie und Philosophie, LitVerlag Münster 2003

Web links

Commons : Sidereus Nuncius  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the essay by Horst Bredekamp, ​​Angela Fischel, Birgit Schneider, Gabriele Werner: Images in Processes in the Art History Yearbook for Image Criticism. Volume 1,1, March 2003 Imagery of Knowledge ( Memento of the original from May 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.6 MB). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kulturtechnik.hu-berlin.de
  2. ↑ Markus Becker: Galileo's first images of the moon discovered , Der Spiegel on March 30, 2007, accessed on December 30, 2013
  3. ↑ Horst Bredekamp: Galileo the artist: The moon. The sun. The hand. , Berlin, Academy 2007
  4. ↑ Irene Brückle, Oliver Hahn, Paul Needham, Horst Bredekamp (eds.): Galileo's O , Akademie Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-05-005095-9
  5. ↑ Elisabetta Povoledo: At Root of Italy Library's Plunder, a Tale of Entrenched Practices , The New York Times, August 11, 2012, accessed January 1, 2014
  6. ↑ Nicholas Schmidle: “A Very Rare Book”. The mystery surrounding a copy of Galileo's pivotal treatise , The New Yorker , December 16, 2013, p. 62
  7. ↑ Stephan Speicher: Behind the Moon , Süddeutsche Zeitung , December 21, 2013, p. 11
  8. ↑ Hanno Rauterberg: Der fälsche Mond , Die Zeit , December 27, 2013, accessed on December 29, 2013. Bredekamp replied to Rauterberg's criticism, Die Zeit , January 9, 2014, p. 44