Sketches of faint stars in the Orion constellation, as seen by Galileo through his telescope. The larger stars with a central dots are those visible to the naked eye, with the topmost three corresponding to the so-called belt of Orion. That the universe contained many more stars than previously known gave moral support to the idea that it may also be a lot larger than assumed up to then. This idea had been advanced by Copernicus himself, as a possible explanation for the lack of observed annual parallax in the fixed stars. Reproduced from Galileo's 1610 Sidereus Nuncius
Galileo, G. 1610, Sidereus Nuncius, trans. A. Van Helden 1989, The University of Chicago Press.
-Written and last revised 20 December 1997 by paulchar@ucar.edu.
