Galileo • Final Project

Galileo Galilei was an astronomer, mathematician, engineer, physicist, and philosopher. He is often referred to as the “father of observational astronomy” because of his major contributions to science during the Renaissance. According to Stephen Hawking, Galileo is probably responsible for the birth of modern science more than anybody else, and Albert Einstein called him the father of modern science. Although he was arrested for his controversial view on heliocentrism and was not pardoned by the Catholic Church until 1992, he is renowned all over the world for his discoveries. One of his most famous scientific discoveries was the observation of Jupiter’s four moons. When Galileo first noticed Jupiter’s moon, he thought they were stars. He noted in his journal that they were "three fixed stars, totally invisible by their smallness”. Once he observed that the “stars” were moving around Jupiter, he realized that they were actually moons. He originally named them The Medicean Stars, in honor of Cosimo Medici II and his three brothers. Eventually, these moons would be renamed to honor Galileo. This discovery was an astronomical revolution because a planet with smaller planets orbiting it did not conform to the principles of Aristotelian Cosmology, which stated that all heavenly bodies should circle the Earth.

            Galileo made so many contributions to astronomy, mathematics, physics, and other fields. He truly played an irreplaceable role in the history of science and he continues to be revered for those contributions. Several scientific endeavors and principles are named after Galileo including the Galilean moons and the Galileo Spacecraft the first spacecraft to enter orbit around Jupiter. Also, because 2009 was the fourth centenary of Galileo's first recorded astronomical observations with the telescope, the United Nations scheduled it to be the International Year of Astronomy.

            Galileo’s contributions and continuing influence on the field of science inspired my final project. I wanted to create something that commemorated the beginning with Galileo’s revolutionary discoveries, and showed how far we’ve come since then. While at the Galileo Museum, I was drawn to all the different tools Galileo used and invented. I was impressed by not only the tools’ practicality but also by their beauty. I was especially fascinated by the wooden “quadrante” in the first room of the museum. It was so large and had ornate carvings on it. I was also drawn to many of the golden military compasses. These tools were the focus of my piece and made up the main design elements. I used them to collage together various pictures of Galileo, his tools, and his sketches on one side, while pictures of more recent space excursions were collaged together on the other side. On the Galileo side of the piece, the background is a paper texture, similar to the pages of his books. On the modern space side of the piece, the background is the surface of the moon. I used these two textures because they actually look similar when the moon is blown up in this way, but also because the main idea of my piece was to show how science began on the pages of Galileo’s journals, and has now taken us all the way to the surface of the moon.