No one would be likely to have retained his
belief in such a doctrine when he saw how the number of visible stars
could be increased tenfold by means of Galileo's telescope. It would
have been almost impossible to refuse to draw the inference that the
stars thus brought into view were still more remote objects which the
telescope was able to reveal, just in the same way as it showed
certain ships to the astonished Venetians, when at the time these
ships were beyond the reach of unaided vision.
Galileo's celestial discoveries now succeeded each other rapidly.
That beautiful Milky Way, which has for ages been the object of
admiration to all lovers of nature, never disclosed its true nature
to the eye of man till the astronomer of Padua turned on it his magic
tube. The splendid zone of silvery light was then displayed as
star-dust scattered over the black background of the sky. It was
observed that though the individual stars were too small to be seen
severally without optical aid, yet such was their incredible number
that the celestial radiance produced that luminosity with which every
stargazer was so familiar.
But the greatest discovery made by the telescope in these early days,
perhaps, indeed, the greatest discovery that the telescope has ever
accomplished, was the detection of the system of four satellites
revolving around the great planet Jupiter.
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