The weather hasn’t cooperated for stargazing this week. Sometimes that means one must engage in armchair astronomy. So pull out a good book about someone who has made an impact on the field.
At first look, Galileo comes up as a great scientist who discovered the four moons of Jupiter so visible in a binocular, the sunspots which observations turned him blind, and the phases of Venus. Oh, and let's not forget that he built the telescope that fried his eyes.
Of course he had to deal with the inquisition. That was a given, since the Church was struggling with the reformation and had little time to deal with an upstart scientist who challenged geocentricity.
But there are other Galileos out there, like the University of Georgia’s website. http://www.galileo.usg.edu/welcome/
Then there’s Europe’s global navigation satellite, too. It wasn’t developed by the military. Rather, it is a civilian project.
Nasa’s Galileo space probe is common knowledge.
This is the crème de la crème of space exploration that began in 1989 and ended with the crash of the spacecraft in 2003; purposely, for collection of data from below the crust of one of Galileo's moons.
Let’s not leave the kids out of our lineup. The ATI website discusses the educational assessment project under the title Galileo K-12. The kids astronomy link is just for fun.
Finally Nova gives another perspective on the man, Galileo Galilei with further links to discoveries, including the Hubble Telescope.
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