The Hindu : New Delhi News : Celebrating Galileo’s telescope

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Saturday, May 16, 2009
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Celebrating Galileo’s telescope

Madhur Tankha

NEW DELHI: To commemorate the International Year of Astronomy-2009, the National Council of Science Museums is hosting a month-long exhibition here titled “Messages from the Heaven”.

The exhibition, which opened on Friday, celebrates the first astronomical use of the telescope by Galileo — a momentous event that initiated 400 years of astronomical discoveries and triggered a scientific revolution which profoundly affected our world-view.

Covering thousand-year-old instruments that evolved simultaneously across the globe and in different cultures, it presents many astronomical thoughts. It deals with the techniques used in Greek philosophical astronomy, Indian mathematical astronomy and the European physical astronomy.

Replicas, interactive exhibits, innovative digital interfaces, multi-media and enriching graphics of the exhibition will tells visitors about the Universe as we know today, the landmark technologies that helped us evolve our models of the world and the unanswered questions that still intrigue us.

The exhibition will describe the challenges that astronomers face in measuring distance over astronomical scale, in deciding the weight of the Universe and in interpreting faint signals from the sky. Besides showcasing interesting facts like what is the most distant object discovered by the astronomers on April 28, 2009, it will also present a series of astronomy awareness programmes and activities like sky observation, special lectures and film shows.

It will highlight the fact that human endeavour has always been to see farther into the Universe, sharpen the view of distant objects and to explain the observations with solid physical theories.

From naked eye observation to the Hubble space telescope; from use of spectroscopy and photometry to adoption of adaptive optics, human beings have been discovering distant objects to study.

“The night with hundreds of stars and other celestial bodies has always fascinated humankind. The canopy of stars stretching overhead suggests that our world is part of a much larger cosmos. The seeds for better understanding of the cosmos were sown 400 years ago. In 1609 Galileo Galilei, the Italian mathematics professor, built an optical instrument he had heard about: a tube containing two lenses that made distant objects appear nearer. On November 30, he trained his telescope on the heavens and astronomy was never the same again. He observed Sunspots, found satellites of Jupiter rotating around it, and terrains and mountains on moon. The Milky Way resolved to him into stars and he recorded that the Venus presents phases like Moon,” said National Science Centre director S.M. Khened.

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