galileo's moon

[ishmael]

These are drawings that Galileo made of the moon after turning his newly built telescope on it.

http://outreach.atnf.csiro.au/education/senior/astrophysics/galileo.html

Why did he draw such a poor likeness? This is not how the moon looks, either to the naked eye, or through a telescope. There is no big mountain range down the middle, with a giant round crater near the bottom. Is it because he was not used to a telescopic view? Or was there an agenda that distorted his view, or his drawing? Why not show the moon as it is? What was going on here?

[michel123456]

I guess that this drawing was not intended to make an accurate description of the Moon, but it looks more like a diagram showing different surface structures proving that the Moon is not a flat disk but a spherical object. Note that the 2 representations of the phases are complementary: the shadow on the left picture is the opposite of the right one, represented through a deep crater and through an open valley. You can even see the shadow inside of the crater. It looks to me like a demonstration that the phenomena of the phases of the Moon is the same with the night and day and is due to its spherical nature.

[Moontanman]

Galileo, didn't exactly have a Celestron, it's a good bet his view wasn't all that clear. The image is a pretty good representation of the moon, you can see the seas, and craters, my binoculars give a much clearer view but the optics of my binoculars are far more advanced than what Galileo had.