It is a Galileoscope!
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Palomar Skies a blog with news and information about the Palomar Observatory. Postings here will cover current research, history and public outreach events taking place at the observatory.
Blog Archive
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2009
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July
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- I'm Your Moon
- Guitar Hero
- Palomar in Ads - II
- Rawhide
- First Light for Cosmic Web Imager
- Daytime Open Dome
- Video Tour pt. 2
- Eris Anniversary
- Video Tour pt. 1
- Lost History?
- The New World's Largest Telescope
- Last Saturday Night
- TMT Goes to Hawai'i
- 40 Years Ago
- Graffiti on the 200-inch Mirror
- Remembering Apollo, a Comet Crash & Eugene Shoemaker
- Haumea in the News
- Hot on Palomar
- Asteroid Update
- A Work of Art - II
- Galileo, Neptune & Palomar
- Oscar Mayer & Palomar Observatory
- There's No Place Like Dome
- In Case of Emergency . . .
- Deer in the Ferns
- And the Winning Thesis is . . . . .
- Ferns, Dome & Sky
- Fred Givant: 1943 - 2009
- Anniversary of Newton's Principia
- Galileoscopes: Delivered!
- 4th of July Fireworks in 1054 A.D.
- Palomar Skies on twitter (finally)
- Three Cheers for the Red, White & Blue
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July
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Posts
8 comments:
Well, I ordered one...this better be good you guys : )
I ordered one too and am getting slightly impatient...we've just had some amazingly clear skies and I wanna good view of Neptune. Galileo, Galileo, I want my Galileoscope, I ordered it at the beginning of May, of May, of MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY (to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody):)
LOL!
Bohemian Rhapsody should be the official song of the International Year of Astronomy.
In light of the very recent news that Galileo may have known he discovered a new planet when he recorded Neptune near Jupiter in 1613, here is a paper by Charles Kowal who worked at Mount Palomar at the time and how its library helped in this discovery back in 1979:
http://www.dioi.org/Kowal-Galileo.pdf
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v287/n5780/abs/287311a0.html
S. Drake and C. T. Kowal "Galileo's Sighting of Neptune" Scientific American 243(6), 52-59 (1980)
Yes, I know about Charles Kowal's discovery about Galileo & Neptune.
I think the new story is that Galileo may have actually recognized Neptune as something interesting, still I am not seeing Kowal get recognition in the story going around now.
I am trying to rectify that situation in regards to Kowal, which just posting it on your site is doing as well. :^)
I wonder, did Galileo truly understand what he was seeing and decided to keep quiet about it? Or like Saturn's rings, he knew something was up but wasn't sure what.
Judging by his massive ego, I can't imagine that Galileo would have kept quiet even under threat from the Church if it meant he would be the one known as the discoverer of a whole new planet.
Galileo certainly didn't keep his other discoveries a secret. Had he suspected that what we now know to be Neptune was a new thing he would have told the world.
Maybe Galileo thought stars moved too and that his telescope was able to pick up the slight changes that unaided vision could not.
So he interpreted as the object near Jupiter as a moving star.
I wish I could find the quote where he thought the stars were only two to three times farther from us than Saturn.
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