The celestial message

摘要

The inventory of the heavens swelled in March 1610 with the publication of Galileo Galilei's Sidereus nuncius (The Celestial Message, or Messenger). The first survey of the sky using a telescope increased the number of visible stars by more than a factor often and resolved the Milky Way into starlets. The tally of known satellites rose five-fold with the discovery of the four moons of Jupiter, and the count of Earth-like bodies doubled with the detection of mountains on our Moon.