The Discovery of the Galilean Satellites . ... Probably the most significent contribution that Galileo Galilei made to science was the discovery of the four satellites around Jupiter that are now named in his honor. Galileo first observed the moons of Jupiter on January 7, 1610 through a homemade telescope. He originally thought he saw three stars near Jupiter, strung out in a line through the planet. ... Galileo's Observations of Jupiter's Moons . ... Jupiter . ...
... 9a. Earth orbits Sun? . ... As noted earlier , Aristarchus of Samos proposed that the Earth revolved around the Sun, but the idea was rejected by later Greek astronomers, in particular by Hipparchus. ... For a discussion of the discovery of the solar system which includes a "moving picture" illustrating retrogrademotion, click here . ... The full story of the discovery of the solar system--of Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho and Kepler--is long and would take this discussion too far afield. ...
... Timeline . ... 16H. Schwabe, 1843 . 16a. Schwabe paper . ... The weather throughout this year was so extremely favorable that I have been able to observe the Sun clearly on 312 days; however, I counted only 34 groups of sunspots.. From my earlier observations, which I have reported every year in this journal, it appears that there is a certain periodicity in the appearance of sunspots and this theory seems more and more probable from the results of this year.. ... Year . ... 149 . ... 1843 . ...