Episode 45 - Galileo Galelei

WELCOME BAAACK to The Astrocast!

This week on the show, Roo takes a deep dive into one of his absolute favorite persons in history, the one and only Galileo Galilei. Sit back and relax and learn a thing or two about the man who INVENTED modern astronomy. Bonus points if you listen to this episode while checking out the Galilean Satellites. 

His discoveries? Immense and uncountable. His life? Incredible, and yet so full of pain.

Would you like to help support The Astrocast AND get in to our members only Discord? Well today is your lucky day! For just 1-5 dollars per month, you can show your love for The Astrocast and join our Society! Members get access to our private community group chat, which has become my favorite place to talk about Astronomy! Show your support by donating here today!

 You can also support the show by using our affiliate link with High Point Scientific. You get the same great prices as usual but help the show by giving a small percentage of the profits to The Astrocast! Win/win!

Do you need help with your Observatory? Perhaps you want to design a roll off roof system? Then you should talk to Rick and Jeff at Dark Dragons Astronomy! They offer a full range of solutions for your home or professional observatory. They are trust partners of the podcast, and I can fully recommend their services and products!

Thanks so much for tuning in to The Astrocast, and CLEAR SKIES!

Roo

Transcript

00;00;41;25 - 00;01;22;04
Unknown
Welcome back to the Astros cast. I'm your host, Roo. Today is Wednesday, January 15th, 2025. The full moon has left the building. We are officially waning towards a new moon. So hopefully in about 13 days or so, you should be able to, walk out to some nice dark, clear skies. That's, certainly what we'll be hoping for anyway.

00;01;22;07 - 00;01;43;17
Unknown
Thank you so much for tuning in to the Astro cast this week. I am your host, Roo. It's been a pretty good week here in, Charlotte, North Carolina. It's been very, very cold. It's been like, I often complain that we don't really get cold winters anymore in the Carolinas. And as a whole, I would definitely say that that is true.

00;01;43;19 - 00;02;14;12
Unknown
But this year has been the exception because it has been pretty darn cold here. All things considered, for the majority of this year so far. So I'm happy to be back, joining you guys for a, another a fantastic week of astronomy and astrophotography talk. And I wanted to, take a moment and just send a thank you to everyone who reached out about the, the recent for last week's M42 episode.

00;02;14;19 - 00;02;53;23
Unknown
It actually did really well. A lot of people, had a lot to say about HDR processing and in particular how HDR is handled with Orion. And I will say the consensus does indeed seem to be that there needs to be some better tools for how HDR is processed in astrophotography. So the vast majority of people that I spoke with on this subject, while they agreed with me that there are some really neat tools within, pix insight that you can use to, you know, somewhat bring out more resolution or details, I should say, in certain situations.

00;02;53;25 - 00;03;28;03
Unknown
Unfortunately, most of them end up doing a very soft, you know, brush and Photoshop and slowly unmasking the trapezium region while trying to maintain that natural look between there, you know, a longer exposure and shorter exposure image to blend them into an HDR composite, which is pretty much exactly what an HDR image is. It would be a composite of, you know, shorter and longer exposures, to bring out detail at different levels for astrophotography anyway.

00;03;28;03 - 00;04;07;08
Unknown
So if anyone knows of anybody who is working on any scripts or development of any sort, for this particular issue, I would love to hear from them. So please feel free to, send them my email address, which is ru Astro cast at gmail.com. And I'd love to, talk to them about HDR imagery within astrophotography. So one of the things that I've been doing, these last couple weeks has been reading up more on astronomy and kind of studying the history of astronomy, to the extent that I can.

00;04;07;10 - 00;04;34;22
Unknown
Unfortunately, I do find that while there are a lot of books out there on astronomy, you would be surprised to learn that there aren't as many, you know, biographies about famous astronomers, for example, as you might think there could be. With that being said, though, one very famous, if not the most famous astronomer is one that I've always greatly admired the work of.

00;04;34;25 - 00;05;05;21
Unknown
And, I often think about all the amazing stuff that he was able to accomplish with tools that are, you know, not even 1000 times, as powerful as what we have available to us today or 1,000th as powerful as what we have available to ourselves these days. And yet was still able to accomplish so much. And, you know, a lot of that had to do with the times.

00;05;05;24 - 00;05;37;10
Unknown
It was again, hundreds of years ago, and we were living in a very, very, in a very different world in a time when for over a thousand years, people had followed Aristotle, for the most part with his geocentric model, which basically was groundbreaking for the time, considering it was, you know, 380 BC, when Aristotle came up with his geocentric model.

00;05;37;12 - 00;06;26;03
Unknown
But the problem was that that basically posited that everything rotated around the Earth, the sun and the planets all rotated around the Earth, and that the universe and its entire ity was actually, rotating around the Earth. So Aristotle's model would go unchallenged for over a thousand years until we finally got to our main character of our story, who, if you have not guessed by yet, is Galileo Galilei, the very, very famous Italian astronomer who did not invent the telescope per se, but he very much did help, perfected as an instrument for actually doing astronomical viewing.

00;06;26;05 - 00;07;03;01
Unknown
So whenever Galileo first heard of the telescope, he was actually, already working as a, mathematician, and he had heard about a device called a spyglass that was coming out of the Netherlands. Now, the truth is a Dutch spectacle maker by the name of Hans Liver. He is actually credited with the invention of the spyglass, which was the direct precursor to the telescope.

00;07;03;01 - 00;07;40;23
Unknown
And just 1608. So just two years after hearing about the spyglass, Galileo actually made his seminal discoveries. In the year 1610, the Dutch would come into ships in Venice, where Galileo was living, and they would bring in all sorts of new wares to trade with the Venetians. And during one of these trade sessions, Galileo likely ran into somebody who actually had a spyglass and was able to, you know, understand what was happening, have a look at one.

00;07;40;23 - 00;08;12;11
Unknown
And ultimately, he said, I need to specialize this device a little bit. But the lenses were the most important part. And putting two of them together in the fashion that Galileo did, really, really did change the game. So the spectacles that the Dutch, eyeglass maker or, I'm sorry, spectacle maker, they would go by, were making just had a magnification of around three times.

00;08;12;11 - 00;08;50;04
Unknown
So, as you know, three times magnification isn't that great when you're doing astronomy three times, it'll certainly get you a, you know, a closer look at constellations. But you won't be able to get up close and look at planets or nebula or anything like that with a, a three, three x spyglass. So what Galileo did was in 1609, he actually made his own telescope, and was able to achieve a magnification of eight times because he understood the properties of light and how it works.

00;08;50;04 - 00;09;22;27
Unknown
And the distance required between two lenses to achieve such magnification. So think about it. The year is 1610, and for the first time ever, someone is pointing a device at the sky that is allowing them to blow up the sky by eight times magnification, something with which we didn't even have words to describe back then. They would say things like it's a device that helps you see things from far away.

00;09;23;00 - 00;09;43;08
Unknown
That's how you would have to describe it to somebody, because nobody knew what a, you know, a telescope or a microscope was. They knew what spectacles were and they knew that they could make, reading letters. You know, better, but they couldn't imagine seeing something from, you know, 1000ft away, much less something, you know, millions of light years away.

00;09;43;08 - 00;10;15;08
Unknown
So here comes Galileo, and he is able to invent, essentially a new device by putting it on a very stable mount that will allow for really precise aiming at celestial bodies. And what does he look at first? Well, he starts, studying features on the moon first. So prior to 1609, people thought that the moon was actually a smooth, perfect sphere.

00;10;15;10 - 00;10;51;04
Unknown
And Galileo was able to very clearly see that they have mountains, valleys and craters. And this was one of the very first contradictions to the Aristotle point of view, that celestial bodies were flawless and unchanging, which is a very, very important point to make, because by saying that heavenly bodies are flawless and unchanging, you are imparting that there is some type of divine being behind these bodies.

00;10;51;04 - 00;11;13;01
Unknown
They've already been made perfect and they will never change. And as we know today, the universe is constantly changing. If anything, it would be amazing if there were not change. But as it was, everybody you know believed their estatal because they had no reason not to, that the moon was indeed a perfect sphere and that it would never change.

00;11;13;01 - 00;11;44;06
Unknown
So Galileo comes out and he says, actually, there are mountains and craters on the moon. Sadly, when Galileo brought his observations to the scientific community, to share his findings, many, if not most, scientists and scholars were extremely skeptical. To put it nicely, of what Galileo found, many of them would even refuse to even look through his telescope.

00;11;44;06 - 00;12;12;14
Unknown
He would literally have a scientist, so-called scientist, standing beside him outside while he is explaining that there are mountains on the moon. And he would say, you know, just look through this eyepiece and you can see with your own eyes. And they would they would literally laugh him off and say, you've got flawed optics or it's an illusion and every kind of excuse that you could think of, and we're just outright refused to even look through the eyepiece.

00;12;12;14 - 00;12;44;27
Unknown
But you have to realize this is at a time where the the Catholic Church's authority is total, and nobody wants to challenge the old ways of thinking. So the, Aristotle in cosmology and Ptolemaic model, the problem with them is that they were both they were very, very, deeply intertwined with the teachings of the Catholic Church.

00;12;44;29 - 00;13;26;13
Unknown
So this idea that we kind of touched on earlier that celestial bodies, including the moon, were perfect. Essentially, they are perfect objects and they will never change. And that is why the Aristotle model lasted as long as it did that. And there was no telescope. And while they didn't outright condemn him for his initial observations, those observations and words that Galileo spoke to truth, they they most certainly laid the groundwork for the future conflicts that he would have with the church.

00;13;26;16 - 00;13;50;11
Unknown
And he would continue to advocate for the, Copernican heliocentric model. Galileo would. And yet things would only get worse for him, as we know, as time went on. But let's back up a little bit before we get to the, the church condemning, Mr. Galilee. So first of all, let's talk about who Galileo, the man was.

00;13;50;11 - 00;14;35;29
Unknown
So he was born February 15th, 1664, in Pisa, Italy. Now today in the modern world, that would be in Florence, Italy. So Galileo was one of seven children. So he had a lot of brothers and sisters. And he did have a mother and father at home. That were huge influences on him, though I will say, my understanding is that Galileo's father, Vincenzo or Vincenzo, rather, Galileo, is generally seen as a, bigger figure in Galileo's life.

00;14;35;29 - 00;15;09;05
Unknown
His mother, Julie, Manatee, she is suggested through historical records that she was very much a, hardheaded, strong, well determined type woman. She kept a, a tough but, you know, clean and neat household, was very firm with discipline and they, you know, having seven children and the father being a musician, generally were a, a fairly poor family, and all things considered.

00;15;09;07 - 00;15;39;03
Unknown
Now, Vincenzo, though, Galileo's father, he's a pretty interesting figure. So he is actually a musician, and he is a, a rather famous flutist at the time. If you don't know what the lute is, it's a, early precursor to the guitar that was, very, very popular back in the Renaissance days. And if you've ever seen a, Lord of the rings movie, then you've certainly seen someone play a lute.

00;15;39;05 - 00;16;13;08
Unknown
If you've ever encountered something called a bard in your life, you have seen the lute. So, Vincenzo, is actually a celebrated composer. And music theory is, during the late Renaissance period. And he actually ends up making many contra missions, to the development of musical theory. So he had, a very, very, large contribution on the world that I don't think a lot of people, hear about, because he was also the father of Galileo, obviously.

00;16;13;08 - 00;16;39;29
Unknown
So I think sometimes our kids tend to outshine us a little bit, when we when we look back and I think, Vincenzo would certainly be very, very proud to call Galileo his son. His mother, on the other hand, that's kind of hard to say. So when Galileo was 13, it was already very apparent how bright he was.

00;16;40;02 - 00;17;11;01
Unknown
But he was also a bit of, a tortured soul, truth be told. And needed, needed some stability in his life. You can imagine if you're growing up with, you know, seven siblings all together and you're in a poor household with, you know, a fairly strict mother who runs the household, that any sort of stability that you could get, having a brilliant mind would be something that you would very much cling to.

00;17;11;03 - 00;17;34;13
Unknown
So seeing how bright their son is and knowing that there is a real chance that if they get him the tools that he needs, he could, you know, be something great one day, the mother and father decide when Galileo is just 13 years old, that they are going to send him to Vallon Bruce, monastery. So this is in, Santa Maria.

00;17;34;13 - 00;18;10;24
Unknown
The the the villain. Bruce. Forgive me, but it's near, modern day Florence, Italy. And it was a, Benedictine institution and a monastery that was well known for its high, high standards in education and humanities, mathematics and logic, which was something that Galileo was also very much interested in, particularly mathematics and logic. Maybe not so much on the humanities, but later in life he would focus more on humanities than one would think.

00;18;10;26 - 00;18;42;03
Unknown
So the parents are thinking to themselves that they've got, you know, a great opportunity here because their son is at these very formative years. They can tell that he's very bright and they have an opportunity to send him to an institution, which is known for excellent education standards. So they see it as a win win. Unfortunately, though, for, Vincenzo and Juliet, Galileo fell in love with the monastery.

00;18;42;05 - 00;19;23;02
Unknown
He he very, very much appreciated the monastic lifestyle, all which really emphasized scholarly pursuit and spiritual reflection. And a young Galileo very, very much needed this in his life. And he was drawn to the, the religious discipline and very contemplate to life that the, the monastery offered to him. And during this time was when he truly realized, you know, how gifted he was in intellectual, studies.

00;19;23;04 - 00;19;49;29
Unknown
And that was very, very highly valued in the, circles of monks that were, you know, seen in these types of schools. So, you know, Vincenzo and, and his mother come back to get him. And Galileo says, you know, I'm going to become a monk. This is what I'm going to do with my life. And, this is, you know, not at all what his parents were expecting.

00;19;50;02 - 00;20;26;18
Unknown
So Vincenzo sees his incredibly bright young son about to, you know, essentially throw his life away is how Vincenzo feels about it, by giving himself to the monastery. And even though Galileo, argues with him and very much wants to stay at the school and become a monk, ultimately Vincenzo is able to, convince Galileo to go to a different school, and he ends up steering his son away from becoming a monk.

00;20;26;18 - 00;20;56;26
Unknown
So if you think about that, had Vincenzo not intervene and just told Galileo, you know, you be a monk and run down your dream. Well, I think all of humanity, owes a little bit of applause to Vincenzo Galilee for steering his son in the right direction. So the next time, if you're younger and your parents are telling you to do something and you're telling them I don't want to, it's not in my heart.

00;20;57;00 - 00;21;32;29
Unknown
Just remember Galileo and Vincenzo, Galileo. And think about, all the differences that wouldn't have happened in our world. I mean, we might not have the Industrial Revolution if we are still depending on a geocentric model. I mean, you think about just the foundation that Galileo laid for the scientific method itself. Galileo was the first person to insist on using math to describe natural laws.

00;21;33;01 - 00;22;18;22
Unknown
He was actually the first person to formulate the relationship between time, distance, and acceleration for falling objects. He was the first person to do experiments in what we now know as a controlled setting. So before Galileo, you have to remember much of science was based on the teachings of Aristotle. And while Aristotle did many, many amazing things, a lot of them were very, very wrong and relied solely on reasoning and making sure that you can tie things in with religion to make sure that the church is happy.

00;22;18;29 - 00;22;54;20
Unknown
And Galileo said, no, if we can't see it with our own eyes, then it's not true. He was one of the first people who basically said, if you can't directly observe a phenomenon, then how can you prove that it's actually happening? Which is exactly what he did with his telescopic observations of celestial bodies. For example, before Galileo, we had no new discoveries of anything within our solar system or the universe as a whole.

00;22;54;22 - 00;23;31;07
Unknown
Since antiquity. We think about that thousands of years go by, no discoveries whatsoever. Galileo comes along and all of a sudden we know about the Galilean satellites. So by 1610, Galileo had improved his original telescope design to where the magnification could now go up to 20 times magnification, which before, as we remember, we could only get to eight times magnification.

00;23;31;09 - 00;24;06;21
Unknown
So Galileo points his telescope at Jupiter, and he notices three stars are what he calls them, that are near the planet, but seem like they're aligned in a straight line in and close to the planet. Looking through the telescope, they appear to be fixed stars in the background that are very, very close to the planet. So initially he's a little bit confused by this, and he's he's wondering to himself why all of the other stars are so, so far away, seemingly.

00;24;06;26 - 00;24;34;27
Unknown
And don't appear to change size at all when you look at them through the telescope. But when he looks at Jupiter specifically, these new stars do appear to, change size, if you will, when looking through the lens, because you can now see them where you couldn't see them before with the naked eye. So they're definitely a different size than the other stars that he can observe, with his naked eye.

00;24;35;05 - 00;25;07;02
Unknown
But he's not sure what to make of it. So of course, what does he do? He continues to observe. So night after night goes by and this is, January of 1610 and he starts noticing that these bright stars are actually in different spots every night. So they seem to be changing, relative to Jupiter's position. So not only that, but the movements are kind of unusual to them.

00;25;07;02 - 00;25;53;17
Unknown
And he's he's watching these happen. And then to his absolute delight and surprise, on January 13th of 16, ten, he observes a fourth star. So Galileo starts tracking the patterns of these movements. So he looks each and every night that he can at Jupiter. And after watching these four stars move around the Jupiter and then disappear here and reappear, he finally realizes that these are objects that are orbiting Jupiter and you have to think for a minute.

00;25;53;20 - 00;26;38;03
Unknown
This is the first new object discovered since antiquity in our universe, and it is orbiting another planet. So mind you, a lot of people, most people, in fact, are still under the belief that Aristotle's model is correct and that everything revolves around the Earth, because that is the way that God made it. But the problem with that is why would everything revolve around Earth but this other planet that is, you know, a few doors down from us, clearly has four objects that are orbiting around it.

00;26;38;05 - 00;27;12;02
Unknown
So at the time, Galileo names these the Medici and Stars in honor of the Medici family, which were, patrons of him and his families at the time. And it's ironic because he always referred to them as the Medici and Stars. And yet today we know these as the Galilean satellites. So after observing Jupiter through all of January and February and coming to his conclusions, what does Galileo do?

00;27;12;05 - 00;27;45;25
Unknown
He turns around just a month later, in March of 1610, and publishes his famous work, The Starry Messenger. And this book ends up basically cementing Galileo Place as one of, if not the top astronomer and scientists of his day. Just keep in mind, like I said earlier, since essentially the beginning of time, at this point, nobody had ever discovered anything new in our solar system or anywhere else.

00;27;46;03 - 00;28;22;08
Unknown
And here comes Galileo saying that not only have I discovered something new, I have discovered for some things new and not only that, but what I discovered is direct evidence that correlates with the Copernican theory and goes against everything that Aristotle stood for, and therefore everything that the church stands for. So flash forward to the summer of 1610 and Galileo is on to observing Saturn.

00;28;22;11 - 00;28;54;29
Unknown
And Saturn is quite unique. When Galileo points his 20 x magnification telescope up at Saturn, he's quite surprised to see that, unlike Jupiter, Saturn does not appear to be just a single round disk like he sees with other planets. But it has kind of a peculiar shape, and he actually describes the planet as having ears, is what he says in other writings.

00;28;54;29 - 00;29;28;11
Unknown
He says that there appears to be, two stars on either side of Saturn. And naturally, he thinks to himself that perhaps, these are stars that are similar to the other quote unquote, stars that I saw on Jupiter. So unfortunately, the telescope was starting to reach some of its limits with that 20 x magnification. So Galileo couldn't really further discern what was actually going on.

00;29;28;11 - 00;30;04;28
Unknown
And he was not able to actually determine the rings. In 1610. But what really puzzled him was when he looked back at Saturn in 1612, the ears were gone, and Saturn now was indeed appearing as a single around the planet like the other planets. Now, at the time, we know, that this is what happens when Saturn is tilted on the correct axis, that it appears to be straight on with us.

00;30;05;00 - 00;30;28;07
Unknown
And in fact, this is I think if not now, it will be happening very soon. I haven't checked on this. Let me see. Okay. I just actually went and checked. It's actually, in March of this year, is when it's going to appear that they disappear. And this actually happens every, 14 to 15 years, if you're curious about it.

00;30;28;10 - 00;31;04;10
Unknown
When Saturn goes edge on completely for us and we, basically cannot see the rings anymore. So that's what happened in 1612 when Galileo, lost sight of what he called the ears of Saturn. Luckily for Galileo, the ears reappeared in, 1613. So the cycle, it pretty much baffled Galileo. He unfortunately did not have access to the technology to understand the phenomenon like we do today.

00;31;04;13 - 00;31;31;25
Unknown
Now we know that obviously Saturn has rings around it, which are there because lots of various space debris, if you will, is orbiting around the planet. And actually it's it's predominantly water ice that make up Saturn's rings. The they do have, some dust and rocky materials in there as well. I think the vast majority, 95% or more consists of water ice, for Saturn's rings.

00;31;32;01 - 00;32;02;07
Unknown
Coincidentally, if you look back through Galileo's notes, you can see his very clear frustration with, being unable to really resolve the resolution needed to be able to solve the mystery of the years of Saturn. He's actually, quoted at one point saying, I do not know what to say in a case so surprising, so unlooked for and so novel.

00;32;02;10 - 00;32;34;07
Unknown
And I think that really, kind of captures his sense of frustration about being unable to explain the phenomenon. He only had access to the tools and knowledge of his time he was creating, the knowledge of his time and it would be, you know, another 45 years before the technology was available to where the the mystery of the ears of Saturn could be solved.

00;32;34;07 - 00;33;12;00
Unknown
And it would be, one Christian Huguenots in 1655. That would finally propose that they were indeed a, thin, flat ring encircling the planet. And so Christian actually was able to use a, much more for the time advanced telescope than what Galileo had. And he observed the actual, flat ring that surrounds Saturn. And he was, again famously quoted as saying, it is surrounded by a thin, flat ring, no where touching and inclined to the ecliptic.

00;33;12;02 - 00;33;42;27
Unknown
So Coogan's work, it made a huge step forward and understanding planetary science for us. And even though he might not have had the tools needed, to see the rings for himself, he was indeed the first person to see the rings of Saturn. Galileo was not Christian Juergens. He was the first person to see them and be able to know what he was looking at.

00;33;42;29 - 00;34;08;04
Unknown
Kind of, if you think about it, because actually, we didn't know that it was ice water until our understanding became even better. So, like, all these things we we take for granted nowadays because we think we know so much, but it's all been extremely iterative. So keep in mind it it was over a thousand years between Aristotle and Galileo.

00;34;08;09 - 00;34;41;12
Unknown
That is a very, very long time to pass with no real steps forward and scientific breakthroughs. You know, I just realized I keep saying a thousand years, but Aristotle actually lived in 322 B.C., so he lived a much, much longer time ago than Galileo did. So it's actually closer to 2000 years, 1885 years. Separate Aristotle in Galileo.

00;34;41;12 - 00;35;10;26
Unknown
So, so to give a little bit of, context, the same amount of time exists between the birth of Jesus in the birth of Niels Bohr. So you're talking, you know, that long of a time, 1885 years has gone by, since Aristotle came up with his theory, which very much reinforces the church's idea that Earth is the center of the universe.

00;35;10;28 - 00;35;55;19
Unknown
So Galileo releases Darius nonsense in 1610, The Starry Messenger, and not only does he release his book, but bucking tradition, he decides that he is going to write his book in Italian. Now, you might say to yourself, okay, an Italian guy writing a book in Italian. That sounds pretty reasonable to me. And nowadays you would be correct in that, but back in the 1600s, writing in Italian was not something common at all for an Italian scientist to do.

00;35;55;19 - 00;36;37;25
Unknown
Instead, it was very typical to write your scientific papers and books in Latin and Latin, being very, very, tied to the authority of the church and traditional academic institutions. So by deciding to write this book in Italian, Galileo books, you know, a thousand years of tradition, hell, more than a thousand years of tradition, probably more like 2000, and says that I am going to write a book that the every man can read and understand.

00;36;37;28 - 00;37;26;29
Unknown
So here's this book in 1610 that comes out and it talks about mountains on the moon, moons flying around Jupiter, and the Earth is not at the center of the universe. So the church absolutely takes notice of this. In 1610. And the the fairly quickly here about Galileo's work. And not only do they hear about a lot of the, clergy are actually, very interested in it, because keep in mind, this was a time when, just like Galileo would have those that were monastic, were very much of the educated mind.

00;37;26;29 - 00;37;59;10
Unknown
So, you know, to read and study in church was extremely common. But to go against, you know, God's word was very much sacrilege, and you just didn't do it back then. So while there was certainly, controversy over The Starry Messenger, it was not outrightly condemned by the church. But people were certainly starting to take notice at this point of who Galileo was.

00;37;59;10 - 00;38;36;29
Unknown
And what exactly he was preaching. So while the book, was very much rooted in Copernican ideas, Charles Galileo did not, come right out and say he was, quote unquote Copernican, until roughly 16, 15. And it was at this point that Galileo basically began openly supporting the heliocentric model. And this stated that it was the sun and not the Earth at the center of our solar system.

00;38;37;01 - 00;39;14;26
Unknown
Now, the Catholic Church, saw this, and they were not happy. They wanted people to adhere to the geocentric model. And they said, we have to, you know, based what we know off of interpretations of Scripture and to agree with Galileo was potentially heretical. So what is a heretic? Because this is the first, but not the last time that we're going to hear the words heretic and heretical.

00;39;14;28 - 00;39;56;09
Unknown
When referring to Galileo. So traditionally, a heretic is defined as a person who holds or promotes beliefs that are considered heretical by an established authority, especially in a religious contact. Now, being heretical means that you are in opposition to the accepted doctrines or teachings of a particular religious authority. And obviously, during the 17th century, the Catholic Church was the religious authority, at least in, the Western world.

00;39;56;09 - 00;40;44;04
Unknown
So the Roman Inquisition is established in 1542. So, you know, not even a century before Galileo starts laying the groundwork for, you know, proving the Copernican model. And by the 1600s, they were basically running on full steam ahead, and they were prosecuting heretics on the regular. So all they had to do was summon you to Rome and there you would essentially be interrogated and then highly encouraged to confess if you didn't give them the information that they wanted to hear.

00;40;44;04 - 00;41;17;03
Unknown
And this is a very key piece to to say, they would often torture people to extract confessions. Now, this didn't happen everywhere. And it definitely, varied quite a bit by region. But the fact of the matter is that the, the Roman Inquisition, condoned and encouraged torture, to extract confessions from so-called heretics such as scientists like Galileo.

00;41;17;06 - 00;41;49;06
Unknown
So you know what it meant to be convicted as a heretic? Definitely, varied a lot. And it really depended very much so on the person's, basically willingness to recant their prior statements. So, you know, if you confessed after they tortured you, that you knew that it was wrong to say that, you know, the Earth orbits the sun.

00;41;49;08 - 00;42;48;06
Unknown
Then they would let you remain a member of the church, but if you refused to admit that the earth was not the center of the universe, then you could be completely excommunicated from the church. And that might not sound like that big of a deal to us living in 2025. But in 1610, to be excommunicated from the church was essentially, you know, social suicide, you would lose access to your family, your friends, you couldn't get a Christian burial, which meant that you would essentially go to hell after you died and therefore to continue your spiritual penalty, for an eternity.

00;42;48;08 - 00;43;24;01
Unknown
You know, you were just completely ruined. So you were honestly almost better off being imprisoned than excommunicated, because to be excommunicated meant that you you lost contact with everything that you held dear to you. And while Galileo was not totally excommunicated, we will see exactly what happened to him. Please understand that the church was not doing this just to enforce religious orthodoxy.

00;43;24;04 - 00;43;59;22
Unknown
They were maintaining political power. Heresy was seen to threaten all of Christendom. And during these extremely radical times of the Renaissance, you know, after Galileo, scientific discoveries started pouring in, that very much questioned the, the fundamental, foundation of the church itself, because everyone had been taught for thousands of years that the earth was the absolute center of the universe.

00;43;59;22 - 00;44;28;20
Unknown
And if then somebody comes along and tells you, hey, actually, you know, that big, bright light in the sky, we're all we're all moving around that you would probably laugh at them because for thousands of years everyone has known otherwise. But then you look through a telescope and see with your own eyes that there are other moons at Jupiter and what does that do to your head mentally, if you're, you know, not a scientist, where does that put you?

00;44;28;20 - 00;45;03;09
Unknown
And you start to understand, why people were very, very afraid to question authority back then and they would use very similar tactics to what is used very much to this day, to, to scare people, into silence, essentially. But again, this was this was during a time of scientific upheaval Galileo was making absolutely incredible progress.

00;45;03;09 - 00;45;38;22
Unknown
He was every day discovering something new about our universe. And short. Shortly after releasing The Starry Messenger, he was about to just completely lay waste to the geocentric model. Just a quick side note on a piece that I stated earlier when Galileo wrote The Starry Messenger and Italian, you have to realize what what he did there was. He was one of the very first people to help truly democratize knowledge.

00;45;38;25 - 00;46;23;28
Unknown
And just by doing that alone started a complete cultural and intellectual shift away from the rich and powerful, having a monopoly on all knowledge. And it truly begins the scientific revolution that takes place during the Renaissance. So after 1610, the church is aware of Galileo's existence, and he knows that he is causing a bit of a stir, and it brings him international fame, for basically helping to overthrow Aristotle's idea, of a geocentric universe.

00;46;23;28 - 00;47;15;12
Unknown
So in 1613, Galileo publishes another book, and it is called Letters on Sunspots. He was able to observe through much of 1612 and 1613, the sun itself. So this book, further helps unseat the Aristotle opinion. The, universe is made up of perfect celestial bodies that were flawless and unchanging. And the reason it does this is because Galileo is evil, able to prove that there are sunspots, and indeed, that the sun is rotating on its own axis, which is, you know, absolutely mind blowing.

00;47;15;12 - 00;47;40;15
Unknown
But he was the first person to actually use the projector method with a telescope, which we know very well today, because I think it's an experiment that most of us did way back in grade school. But essentially he would, you know, point the telescope directly at the sun, and then the eyepiece would then eject the light onto, you know, a flat surface or a piece of paper.

00;47;40;22 - 00;48;11;16
Unknown
And this would allow him to actually observe sunspots and then track their movement across the sun's surface. Though there is a lot of, opinions and thoughts on whether or not Galileo observed the sun directly. Most likely he did, and he probably tried to use, less than perfect, filters, which are nothing like the modern filters that we have today.

00;48;11;19 - 00;48;37;01
Unknown
They would often be tinted by smoking glass to darken it. And this was, you know, hoped to reduce the sun's light enough to where, it could not damage the eyes. But of course, that is not the case and can still very much, harm the human eye. And unfortunately for Galileo, when he got older, he did lose his eyesight.

00;48;37;01 - 00;49;07;28
Unknown
Sadly, most likely, most people say it was due to his observing the sun so many times. But even though he lost his eyesight from observing the sun without his observation lens again, we would not have gotten rid of the Aristotle model and moved to the, Copernicus method. So, it really did change the way of thinking at the time.

00;49;07;28 - 00;49;32;03
Unknown
And when we realized that, you know, everything that we saw in the heavens was not just this perfect celestial body that's a perfect sphere. And indeed is a, you know, big ball of fire and gas that's burning brightly in our, you know, sky, it it just it just really changed things, quite a bit, to say the least.

00;49;32;06 - 00;50;25;15
Unknown
So even though the church, knew of Galileo in 1610, they definitely knew about him by 1613. So by this time, he's pretty much, internationally known as one of the absolute best in his field. And he has certainly caught the church's eye because his books not only support the Copernican heliocentric model, but they actually have direct evidence that can't predicts the Aristotle Lee and Ptolemaic viewpoint, which the church very much was still trying to protect, even though, you know, anyone who knew anything, including the church clergy themselves, could see that the writing was on the wall and that, you know, as this technology became more available to the masses,

00;50;25;15 - 00;51;04;24
Unknown
including in books. Thank you again, for writing it in Italian and not Latin. They they knew that people were going to get wise to this. So, you know, they have the Inquisition and it's there to prosecute enemies of the church. And Galileo is very, very quickly becoming an enemy of the church. So Galileo, despite all of his international fame and the, financial success that came along with it, he still very much needed to take care of his family.

00;51;04;26 - 00;51;40;05
Unknown
And at this time, he grow to really despise teaching. He basically just didn't like teaching. So even though, he very much shared his knowledge and was very much a teacher in the, purest sense of the word, to, to all of us astronomers, to actually go into a room full of students and teach, you know, after all the things that, he had done and continued to work on was not something that appealed to him whatsoever.

00;51;40;08 - 00;52;23;24
Unknown
A few years after he publishes the book on Sunspots and, 1616, the Catholic Church officially declares the Copernican model formally heretical because it contradicts certain interpretations of Scripture. And Galileo famously wrote to Grand Duchy Christina back in 1615, defending the heliocentric model, and basically arguing that the Bible should not be interpreted literally when it comes to scientific matters.

00;52;23;26 - 00;53;03;22
Unknown
And he also made a point, to point out, that none of the planets were directly mentioned in the Bible. So Galileo would, continue advocating, for the heliocentric model and debating with scholars. He privately considered himself to be a theologian, and love to debate and love to debate clergy as well. He was well known as loving to scientifically, defend his beliefs and was very, very good at doing it.

00;53;03;24 - 00;53;39;11
Unknown
Despite the fact that many of his peers at the time were still thinking and very, old ways and could not basically wrap their head around what Galileo was doing. So Galileo hears about the heliocentric model being declared heretical, and the church actually takes Copernicus, his book on revolutions and adds it to the book. I'm sorry, the the list of forbidden books.

00;53;39;11 - 00;54;17;10
Unknown
So essentially, even reading about the Copernican model from Copernicus himself is forbidden at this point. So even though he knows about this, Galileo continues working privately on his ideas, which support heliocentrism and this is the period of his life, which is a little bit less talked about in the years, you know, after his initial, you know, big discoveries between 1610 and 1615 on the moon and Jupiter and Saturn, etc..

00;54;17;12 - 00;55;00;02
Unknown
During these years, he does continue working privately on his ideas. He continues corresponding with scholars across Europe. He refines his argument on the heliocentric model system and explains, you know, why it is scientifically superior. And it's, during this time, coincidentally, that he gets appointed as the mathematician and philosopher to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, which is a, very, very prestigious position that gave him the financial stability that he was looking for.

00;55;00;05 - 00;55;39;02
Unknown
But more importantly for Galileo, had a clause in the contract which stated he would not have to teach. Remember, he was not a fan of teaching. So he continues his work and research on motion and mechanics. And later in life, he actually ends up publishing what would end up becoming an absolute bedrock to modern physics. So he he studied between 1618 and 1632, specifically motion and mechanics.

00;55;39;05 - 00;56;16;20
Unknown
And it was during this time that he famously was able to measure falling bodies on inclined the planes. I won't get too big into the details there, but he was one of the first people to use a controlled recreate of wheel environment, while measuring things like the speed of falling bodies, projectile motions, and these essentially or the early concepts that laid the groundwork for the Newtonian laws of motion, which, of course, Isaac Newton would come up with much later.

00;56;16;22 - 00;56;51;25
Unknown
And it's also during this time, during the 1620s, that Galileo begins writing what would become his most famous book that he ever writes. And it's called Dialog Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. And it probably sounds much, much prettier in Italian. This book, again, famously published in Italian and made it much, much more accessible to a, very wider audience.

00;56;51;28 - 00;57;38;26
Unknown
And this was essentially Galileo's line in the sand defense of the heliocentric model. So he basically takes a debate between two fictional characters and has them having a dialog back and forth, talking about the geocentric model versus the heliocentric model. And obviously, one of the two during the debate ends up convincing the other why the heliocentric model is correct and proves it by showing the science behind the heliocentric model that Galileo has studied so much over the past 3040 years of his life.

00;57;38;29 - 00;58;16;04
Unknown
And it was this book in particular, that ended up sparking absolute outrage among the church. It was seen as a direct challenge to the church at this time. So Galileo had already been walking a fine line for over three decades, and he really had enough of it. He knew that he was correct because he had done the science and confirmed it, over and over and over again, through his observations.

00;58;16;06 - 00;58;59;27
Unknown
So to so pointless. Only clinging to this old way of thinking, was just ultimately something that he really could not stand for. But unfortunately for him, the Catholic Church was at the absolute height of its power thus far. Back in those mid 1600s. So right before dialog is published in 1632, the church actually summons Galileo to Rome to stand trial before the Roman Inquisition in 1633.

00;58;59;29 - 00;59;37;09
Unknown
Galileo did everything that he could to not leave. He was not in great health at the time, and he actually wrote back, to the, I believe, cardinal that had summoned him and explained that he was in very poor health and even offered to have his doctor write a letter stating that Galileo would not be able to travel due to his health issues, and the church responded with Will send our doctor to you, which obviously Galileo did not want.

00;59;37;09 - 01;00;13;17
Unknown
So ultimately, he ends up, coerced into accepting the invitation and, ends up going on trial before the Roman Inquisition. So if you think back, way back in 1616, Galileo had already been warned by the church not to teach or defend the heliocentric model. They had at that time declared it formally heretical, because it contradicted their scriptural interpretations.

01;00;13;17 - 01;00;56;05
Unknown
But Galileo obviously continued his work in private and then ends up publishing dialog in 1632 and that was when they summoned him to the Inquisition. So the the charges that were actually brought against Galileo, started with having violated the 1616 decree, by basically continuing to defend and teach the Copernican model. So basically, they said that he was breaking the law of God by teaching the Copernican model.

01;00;56;07 - 01;01;52;14
Unknown
Specifically, he was charged with the suspicion of heresy. So suspicion of heresy essentially was a unquote better charge. And I believe I've read that he did have, some defenders in the church, maybe you wouldn't quite call them defenders, but they didn't want to see him hanged for it, essentially. And they certainly didn't want to see him tortured and killed for his way of thinking, which, although they did not want to admit it, many, many people within the church, these were, you know, the most well read people in our culture at the time, they were well aware of what this change meant to the geocentric model moving to the heliocentric model.

01;01;52;17 - 01;02;20;24
Unknown
And they they knew exactly what Galileo meant when he described the motions of heavenly bodies and when he described the moons of Jupiter, and ultimately, sunspots and dialog and everything else that he did. This was not news to them. It did not come, as, you know, shock and awe to the church, that we might rotate around the sun.

01;02;20;26 - 01;02;58;07
Unknown
They they knew the truth. They didn't care. And they chose to charge him with suspicion of heresy. Anyway. So what Galileo tried to argue in his defense was this was fictional work. It was a hypothetical discussion between two hypothetical individuals and therefore could not be construed as a direct endorsement of heliocentrism or anything else for that matter, because it is a a fictional work.

01;02;58;09 - 01;03;28;18
Unknown
Luckily for Galileo, he, did have, like I said, some friends and a high places, in direct relation to the church. And while he was actually on trial, he stayed at the pleasure of the Grand Duke Ferdinando, the second of Tuscany, who actually intervened on Galileo's behalf and let him stay at the Tuscan embassy for his trial and fairly comfortable conditions.

01;03;28;20 - 01;04;04;04
Unknown
Compared to what, the average heretic would have gotten from the Catholic Church at that time, which certainly would not be, comfortable conditions with the Grand Duke of Tuscany. So even though everybody pretty much knew the score, Galileo was found guilty of vehement suspicion of heresy, and he was essentially forced to publicly recant his support for the Copernican model.

01;04;04;06 - 01;04;36;07
Unknown
So he was basically forced to say, I don't believe in the Copernican model. But the funny thing is, is the cat was already out of the bag by that time. It had been 20 years since Galileo, invented, somewhat invented the telescope, took a spyglass and turned it into a telescope. And knowledge had already spread amongst his peers and the church and the people.

01;04;36;07 - 01;05;22;11
Unknown
Because, again, he wrote his books in Italian so anyone could read them. And while I told you earlier on that many scientists would laugh at him and not even look through his eyepiece, that is not to say that all scientists laughed at him and would not look through his eyepiece. Many people listened to what Galileo said, and then, as the scientific method truly came into focus over the following decades and even hundreds of years, we look back now on all of the feats that Galileo accomplished, and he was amazingly accurate with nearly all of his predictions.

01;05;22;11 - 01;05;58;01
Unknown
For example, he measured, the time that it takes for the moons to orbit Jupiter. And his estimate was, I believe, within minutes of the actual orbital time of these moons. He was obviously right about the Copernican model. And even though he was found guilty, luckily for Galileo, since he was suspected of heresy, that is a vehement suspicion of heresy.

01;05;58;04 - 01;06;41;14
Unknown
He was not sentenced to death, but he was, unfortunately, placed on house arrest for the rest of his life. And the book dialog was actually banned. Sadly, so he was 69 years old and he had just been convicted essentially as a heretic by the church. He was terrified. He was humiliated. He he was terrified that he would be tortured if he didn't recant his statements.

01;06;41;14 - 01;07;23;20
Unknown
But recanting for him, for somebody of his intellectual stature, was absolutely humiliating. So imagine being in that position. You talk about a rock and a hard place. You you speak truth and you're tortured, you recant, and your entire life's work is a joke. So he he very much kept to himself, obviously, and the remaining years of his life.

01;07;23;23 - 01;08;04;03
Unknown
This is actually the time when Galileo would complete his final work, which was Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations relating to two new scientists, which, actually had to be smuggled out of Italy to be published in the Netherlands. So his final work had to be smuggled out like a common criminal, in order to be published. And it was revered, actually, and was actually a another groundbreaking book for physics that laid the groundwork for modern physics as we understand it today.

01;08;04;06 - 01;08;36;01
Unknown
It was lucky he finished the book in 1638, because sadly, 1638 was the year that he also went blind. He did continue, his scientific work. After going blind, he had the help of two assistants who he was known to very much, care about. But there's some other drama that happened around them that we won't get into specifically today, but you can read up on it if you're interested.

01;08;36;03 - 01;09;12;22
Unknown
So Galileo's story is timeless. Obviously, we know the struggle that we have to speak truth to power. And we know that obviously, more than ever these days, fact is, under attack. So maybe just keep that in mind, just to remember all the people who came before you that laid the groundwork that allows us to live in the incredible age that we do today.

01;09;12;24 - 01;10;06;19
Unknown
Galileo Galilei ended up dying on January 8th, 1642. He was 77, and he died in the same villa that he spent his remaining years under house arrest in, due to his sentence from the Roman Inquisition. And even though he, Galileo probably didn't know the incredible impact that his work would have on astronomy and indeed the world as a whole, when he died and he would have had no way of knowing, again, he died embarrassed and frustrated, you know, forced to recant his life's work essentially before the church.

01;10;06;22 - 01;10;53;23
Unknown
But, it must have been an absolutely terrible way to go. But if you want to know how strong the will of the church was to maintain that grip on the the geocentric model that Aristotle had introduced, you know, a nearly 2000 years before Galileo first looked at those moons of Jupiter. Then just know that they did not remove the ban on heliocentrism that they placed because of Galileo's work until nearly 180 years later, in 1822.

01;10;53;25 - 01;11;40;05
Unknown
And it was not until another hundred years after that. The Galileo was formally exonerated by Pope John Paul the Second in 1992. So it may have taken us 400 years to come around and understand the errors of our ways. But we eventually got around to it as human beings. I don't look back on anyone from the 1600s and blame them for feeling some kind of way when all they had, you know, was what the church told them for hundreds of years.

01;11;40;05 - 01;12;06;27
Unknown
That's what they had to go on. And somebody comes out with this radical new idea that says, you know, we're not the center of the universe and, you know, everything else that ended up following. So, like, you can't blame people for only having access to so much knowledge at the time when these things happen. It's it's almost like, a comedy of errors.

01;12;06;27 - 01;12;40;27
Unknown
It's it's a culmination of a lot of terrible things all happening in just the wrong way to lead to what I think is one of the most brilliant people to ever live. And being, you know, frustrated, humiliated when he was on his deathbed, instead of being celebrated and surrounded by family and spending his last 20 years, you know, touring the world and getting symposiums on the, heliocentric model.

01;12;41;00 - 01;13;23;03
Unknown
But again, things have changed a bit. At least nowadays, people at least have access to the information, whether or not we choose to believe it. That's entirely up to you. That's entirely up to us. But remember, people like Galileo were the ones who laid the groundwork for modern science. And I guarantee you, someone who is listening to me right now is only alive today because of the advancements of modern science.

01;13;23;05 - 01;13;58;13
Unknown
So when modern science as a majority says something is happening, we would do well to look back to history and maybe not ridicule them for saying it. Maybe we could, you know, look within ourselves and say, maybe we don't know everything there is to know about this world yet. Perhaps we have only scratched the surface and we're still just looking at the years on Saturday.

01;13;58;15 - 01;14;20;01
Unknown
Thank you so much for listening to the Astro cast this week. I have been your host, drew. If you enjoy the show and would like to support us, please feel free, to give what you can at Patreon.com forward slash the Astro cast special shout out to all of our Patreon and members who continue to support the show every single month.

01;14;20;01 - 01;14;50;26
Unknown
You guys know who you are! Thank you so much for always being there! And another special thank you to our friends at Dark Dragons Astronomy. You always sponsor the Astro cast. We'll be back next week with another new episode. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Astro cast. I'm your host, Drew and as always, Clear skies stars.

01;14;50;28 - 01;15;25;25
Unknown
Minus ten 9876. You are listening to the Astro.