In 1920, astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis held a Great Debate. Shapley argued that the spiral nebulae were small and in the Milky Way, while Curtis took a more radical position that they ...

On this date, Jan. 7, 1610, astronomer Galileo Galilei, with a homemade telescope, noticed three points of light near Jupiter. Initially believing they were distant stars, Galileo’s repeated ...

Well, any of us who has ever looked through a telescope could say the same, for the two principal types in use today were developed by giants: the refractor by Galileo and the reflector by Newton.

Thus was born the study of optics. In 1609, about a year after an unknown author made the very first attempt to patent a telescope, Galileo Galilei designed and built his famous instrument ...

Galileo Galilei was born on February 15 ... Galileo soon developed the strongest telescope the world had ever seen, and would prove the Church wrong. Though he had many breakthroughs in physics ...