Essay Example on The Discoveries of Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei was a natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who made many of his revolutionary discoveries during the early 1600s. Many of the websites I found talked about his “fundamental contributions” to the science of astronomy. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about Galileo’s discoveries but I wanted to see  exactly why his findings were considered to be so revolutionary during their time. Why was he such a huge part of the discoveries made during that time period? Even the textbook seemed to praise what he had found so I wanted to see why.

One of his first major breakthroughs that paved the way for future discoveries was the revolutionization of the telescope. Galileo did not invent the telescope but instead modeled his first telescope after others that had been built during that time period around Europe. He made his first telescope in 1609 and it could magnify objects to 3 times their size. Later that same year he created another telescope that could magnify objects to 20 times their size. This is the telescope he used to make many of his future planetary discoveries.

Using the telescope he made, he discovered 4 of Jupiter’s moons. When he first saw them he had mistaken them for stars but after some observation he realized that they were orbiting Jupiter. He first saw three of its moons on January 7th, 1610. Later, he observed a 4th moon near the others and by January 15th, had identified these as moons. In March 1610 Galileo published a book called Siderius Nuncius (The Starry Message) that shared his discoveries of Jupiter's moons. 

Galileo’s next discovery was the phases of venus. In October 1610,  Galileo observed that Venus goes through phases where it is viewed as a crescent, half, or gibbous similarly to our moon. Before the invention of the telescope people had only ever seen Venus and other planets as bright stars. Now Galileo could see the shape of venus as sunlight reflected off its surface. Over the next few months Galileo observed how Venus went through different phases as it orbited. This was a revolutionary discovery because it disproved the geocentric theory and made the heliocentric theory become much more widely known and considered.

Overall, many of Galileo’s telescopic discoveries have impacted the knowledge we have today. I personally feel that Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s moons gets a massive amount of credit while his discoveries relating to Venus don't get enough. Back in the day the heliocentric theory was not at all known or accepted and Galileo’s discovery of Venus’s phases made a huge impact on what people of that time thought they had known. This information seems to be much less praised by industries such as NASA while they highly praise his discovery of Venus’s moons. I feel that Galileo’s discoveries revolutionized our views of astronomy however I believe some of them get more credit than they deserve while others don't get enough.