Sidereus Nuncius, or, The Sidereal Messenger Book

Wow! How excited Galileo was of his findings - really makes you quite appreciative of how ground-breaking the first telescopic observations were. Includes his dedication to patron Cosimo Medici in a lovely prose.

**Note : I read Edward Stafford Carlos' 1880 translation

Quotes
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"… Of the Muses' guardianship and the imperishable mon­uments of literature… she well understood that all human monuments do perish at last by violence, by weath­er or by age, she took a wider view, and invented more imperishable signs, over which destroying Time and envious Age could claim no rights; so, betaking herself to the sky.."

"For who can doubt that you will not only maintain and preserve the expectations about yourself which you have aroused by the very happy beginning of your government, high though they be, but also that you will far surpass them, so that when you have conquered others like yourself, you may still vie with yourself, and become day by day greater than yourself and your greatness?"

"… the diameter of this same Moon appears about thirty times larger, its surface about nine hundred times, and its solid mass nearly 27,000 times larger than when it is viewed only with the naked eye."

"… I have discovered Four Erratic Stars, neither known nor observed by any one of the astronomers before my time, which have their revolutions…"

"… spots, smaller in size, but so thickly scattered that they sprinkle the whole surface of the Moon... and from my observations of them… I feel sure that the surface of the Moon is not perfectly smooth… just like the surface of the Earth itself, which is varied everywhere by lofty mountains and deep valleys."

"There is one other point which I must on no account forget, which I have noticed and rather wondered at: the middle of the Moon seems to be occupied by a certain cavity larger than all the rest, and in shape perfectly round."

"… in the case of the other smaller spots occupying the brighter portion of the Moon… day by day they change, increase, decrease, or disappear…"

"… there is around the body of the Moon, just as around the Earth, an envelope of some substance… which is sufficient to receive and reflect the Sun's rays… That envelope, when illuminated by the Sun's rays, renders the body of the Moon apparently larger than it really is…"

"The entire face of the Moon, that side, that is, which does not feel the Sun's glare, is illumi­nated with a pale light of considerable brightness. … if this kind of light were the Moon's own, or were contributed by the stars, the Moon would retain it, par­ticularly in eclipses… The Earth, with fair and grateful exchange, pays back to the Moon an illu­mination like that which it receives from the Moon…"

"… for I will prove that the Earth has motion, and surpasses the Moon in brightness, and is not the place where the dull refuse of the universe has settled down; I will demonstrate this, and I will confirm it with six hundred arguments taken from natural phenomena."

"… when stars rise just at sunset, in the beginning of twilight, they appear very small… even the planet Venus itself… is so small to see that it scarcely seems to equal a star of the last magnitude… the fixed stars do not look to the naked eye bounded by a circular circumference, but rather like blazes of light, shooting out beams on all sides and very sparkling…

"I have observed the essence or substance of the Milky Way circle… the galaxy is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters."

"They revolve in unequal circles, which is evidently the conclusion to be drawn from the fact that I have never been permitted to see two planets in conjunction…"

"… we have a notable and splendid argument to remove the scruples of those who can tolerate the revolution of the planets round the Sun in the Copernican system, yet are so disturbed by the motion of one Moon about the Earth, while both travel around the Sun in an orb over the course of a year, that they consider that this theory of the constitution of the universe must be… impossible."

"…I gladly publish the explanation which has occurred to me upon this subject, and sub­mit it to the judgment and criticism of all true philosophers."


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