Are there any autobiographies of Galileo Galilei or any letters that he wrote about the telescope?


telescope
Peter asked:


Any autobiographies, letters, or diaries about discovering the 4 moons or something about the telescope would be great.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Astronomy & Space. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Are there any autobiographies of Galileo Galilei or any letters that he wrote about the telescope?”

  1. R MOORE Says:
    March 11th, 2010 at 1:50 am

    I do not know, but he did see a little sillouetto on the wall, and scaromouche did the Fandango! R MOORE

  2. harmonograph Says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 1:46 am

    Read “Galileo’s Daughter” by Dava Sobel. It is based on the surviving letters of Galileo Galilei’s daughter, the nun Suor Maria Celeste and explores the relationship between Galileo and his daughter. harmonograph

  3. Geoff G Says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 12:19 pm

    Galileo’s main books are available in English translations. They are written in the form of dialogs, like a play, and are very easy to read. Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel gives a lot of insight into the man. Geoff G

  4. Mike F Says:
    March 15th, 2010 at 6:55 pm

    Galileo wrote “Siderius Nuncius”, a nice short treatise on discovering the moons of Jupiter as well as all of his early discoveries using the telescope. There are many translations around, but my favorite is the version by Albert van Helden. It has a nice introduction and conclusion and is very readable.

    “Siderius Nuncius” translates to the Starry Message or Messenger. Keplar apparently chose Messenger and that’s the way it has come down through history. One interesting tidbit that I don’t think is included, is on the dedication plate. You’ll notice Galileo named the four moons of Jupiter, Medicean Stars. In the original printing he had named them Cosimo’s Stars, but was advised by the grand duke’s office this was not appropriate and he had to go into each of the 550 copies and paste a small piece of paper over the word Cosimo and replace it with Medici.

    In addition to “Galileo’s Daughter” by Sobel, my favorite bio on Galileo is James Reston’s “Galileo, a Life”. It has all of the juice about il professore. Also the best short scholarly work I always refer to is Galileo by Stillman Drake, probably the all time expert on Galileo.

    Mike Francis Mike F

Leave a Reply