Telescopes and Detectors
Telescopes and the Discovery of the Universe
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Spots on the Sun

Until Galileo's time, people believed the Sun, the Moon and the stars to be heavenly bodies that were perfect and unchanging.

When Galileo and others looked at the Sun with telescopes, they saw dark spots forming on and moving across the Sun's surface.

We now know that sunspots are enormous magnetic storms that rage across the solar surface, hurling vast clouds of ions into surrounding space.

Galileo discovered that the Sun:

  1. is perfect and unchanging
  2. has spots that move across its surface
  3. is a giant ball of burning gas
  4. has enormous magnetic storms

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sun spot movie

Flick through the sketchbook
[2.3 MB animated gif file]

Sketches from Galileo's notebook 1612
The Galileo Project