The effect of this instrument is
to show an object at a distance of say fifty miles, as if it were but
five miles."
The remarkable properties of the telescope at once commanded
universal attention among intellectual men. Galileo received
applications from several quarters for his new instrument, of which
it would seem that he manufactured a large number to be distributed
as gifts to various illustrious personages.
But it was reserved for Galileo himself to make that application of
the instrument to the celestial bodies by which its peculiar powers
were to inaugurate the new era in astronomy. The first discovery
that was made in this direction appears to have been connected with
the number of the stars. Galileo saw to his amazement that through
his little tube he could count ten times as many stars in the sky as
his unaided eye could detect. Here was, indeed, a surprise. We are
now so familiar with the elementary facts of astronomy that it is not
always easy to realise how the heavens were interpreted by the
observers in those ages prior to the invention of the telescope. We
can hardly, indeed, suppose that Galileo, like the majority of those
who ever thought of such matters, entertained the erroneous belief
that the stars were on the surface of a sphere at equal distances
from the observer.
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