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The First Moon Map, and Not By Galileo

Posted by kdawson on from the dutch-trunke dept.

sergio80 writes in with a timely piece of history in this the International Year of Astronomy, celebrating the 400th anniversary of the invention of the telescope. "Galileo Galilei is often credited with being the first person to look through a telescope and make drawings of the celestial objects he observed. While the Italian indeed was a pioneer in this realm, he was not the first..." That honor belongs to Thomas Harriot, an Englishman, who bought his first "Dutch trunke" (i.e. telescope) shortly after its invention in the Netherlands and made a sketch of the moon as seen through it in July of 1609.

9 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Meh. by CastrTroy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Pretty bad drawing. You could probably do a better job if you were a good artist, without any kind of optical device. Galileo gets the credit because his drawings actually looked good.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    1. Re:Meh. by Chris+Tucker · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Tell you what, CastrTroy, I'll give you a telescope that is the equal to what Harriot used (a telescope, by the way, that's inferior to even the cheapest toy telescope sold by Edmund Scientific.) a pencil and a pad of paper, and lets see YOU do a better job of mapping the Lunar surface.

      --
      Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
  2. Unsung hero of science? by Compholio · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Despite his innovative work, Harriot remains relatively unknown. Unlike Galileo, he did not publish his drawings.

    "Thomas Harriot is an unsung hero of science," Chapman said.

    Not a chance, Harriot cannot be a hero of science since he did not publish his work. If you don't actually take the risk of publishing and try to contribute your knowledge to the world then you are not a hero of science.

    1. Re:Unsung hero of science? by Onymous+Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Dogma.

      If a person makes private discoveries that are later uncovered, it's still valuable.

      If heroism requires personal risk, there are plenty other ways an investigator could endanger themselves in the pursuit of knowledge.

      All that said, Harriot is still probably not a hero.

    2. Re:Unsung hero of science? by Compholio · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't think so, I didn't say anything about the quality or integrity of the work he did - I just said he's not a hero. If he had published his work and was persecuted for it (as Galileo was) then he could be considered a hero. This difference doesn't diminish the quality or importance of the work, but for him to be able to qualify as a hero of science (taking into account the time period) he would have to have published his work.

  3. Galileo's contribution was different by Kupfernigk · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The difference is that this was a well off amateur drawing the Moon, which was already known to have features. Galileo's main discoveries were sunspots (i.e. sun is not perfect) and 4 Jovian moons (i.e. not everything in the Universe could rotate around the Earth.) These were groundbreaking discoveries because they destroyed the Scholastic world-view as effectively as the Theory of Relativity replaced absolute space and time.

    Therefore this is all a bit of special pleading. This guy basically bought a telescope and drew a few pictures. Galileo made a telescope and changed the way we looked at the world.

    Disclaimer: I'm British, I revere Newton, but Galileo is the one I really look up to.

    --
    From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
  4. first maps "of the whole moon"? orly? by v1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Harriot went on to produce more maps from 1610 to 1613, ... By 1613 he had created two maps of the whole moon, with many identifiable features such as lunar craters that crucially are depicted in their correct relative positions.

    Last I checked, the moon is tidally locked with the earth, meaning its orbit about equals its rotation and so we always see the same hemisphere of the moon, even from other places on the earth.

    So if this guy made the first map of the "whole moon" he must have also invented space travel or received a drawing from Mars. I'm sure what they meant to say was "full map of the moon as visible from earth", but lets keep the detail level reasonable.

    The far side of the Moon was not seen in its entirety until 1959, when photographs were transmitted from the Soviet spacecraft Luna 3.

    ya, that.

    --
    I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
  5. Re:first maps "of the whole moon"? orly? by Hognoxious · · Score: 2, Insightful

    When you've finished being a total cock, perhaps you could apply some common sense as to what they meant by "the whole moon" in the context of the knowledge available at the time.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  6. Looking at a different angle by sarahbau · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Isn't it possible that the observers were just looking at it from different angles? Imagine the moon is directly overhead, and you aim a camera (or telescope) at it. What is the "top" of the moon? You could rotate the camera to any angle to make any part of the moon you wanted to be on the top of the photograph.

    The moon of course isn't directly overhead most of the time, so the angle someone is observing it from could depend on the time of night, where they are on earth, etc.