Galileo, Venice & the Moon

Travelling exibition

Venice, Italy From26/10/2009 09:00 To 27/11/2009 18:00 The exhibition "Galileo, Venice & the Moon" will be hosted from 26 October through 27 November 2009 at Palazzo Zorzi. The event is held within the frame of the Internal Year of Astronomy and organised with the collaboration of the Vatican Museums, the National Maritime Museum–London, the State Archive of Venice, the University Library of Padova, the San Servolo Service, the UNESCO Office in Venice and the Asiago Municipality.
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This traveling exhibition (San servolo, Venice, Asiago) will be inaugurated on the occasion of the international Symposium "Astronomy and its instruments before & after Galileo" (L'Astronomia e i suoi strumenti prima e dopo Galileo) scheduled to take place from 28 September to 3 October 2009 on the Island of San Servolo.

Four hundred years ago, in autumn 1609, Galileo raised his spyglass to the night sky: among all the stars, he first observed the Moon discovering that it was covered with “mountain chains and deep valleys”. This extraordinary discovery gave rise to other sensational astronomical discoveries which demonstrated to the human eye a new universe never seen and imagined before. This happened between Padova and Venice, mainly in Venice where Galileo used to go frequently to visit the famous Arsenal – the very place where he learned so much about mechanical experiences -, to meet his Venetian friends at Andrea Morosini’s house, to hear news which foreign merchants brought from around the world at the “Golden Ship” shop in ‘Merceria’, to meet the famous consultor in iure of the Republic, the Servite friar Paolo Sarpi, a great expert in all scientific disciplines who urged him to construct the spyglass. Here the New Astronomy – the telescopic astronomy - was born, a true scientific revolution started up. In this exhibition, the Moon is an exemplary witness of this revolution: by Galileo, lunar cartography developed, telescopes improved, the theory of lunar motion was perfected. By the invention of photography, great photographic atlases started to be printed, an accurate topography of Moon’s visible face was made which gave man the possibility to step on lunar ground forty years ago.
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Photo credit : Galileo's sketches of the moon/Wikimedia. Galileo Galilei's telescope/Art Resource