First edition of the foundation of modern astronomy, overthrowing all that came before.

Title Page of Galileo’s astronomical account

The first account of astronomical discoveries made with the telescope: the Milky Way and nebulae composed of stars, the moons of Jupiter, and the irregular surface of the Moon.

Portrait of Galileo Galilei by Justus Sustermans (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress)

In 1609 Galileo began to build his own telescope, originally succeeding with a nine-power instrument, and within months he had continued to grind the lenses himself and refined the magnification to thirty-power. Training his eyes upward revealed that that the Aristotelian conceit of fixed heavenly bodies was incorrect—moons orbited Jupiter and the Milky Way was composed of individual stars. Indeed, his observation of the moon and its mountainous surfaces was transformational to selenography, confirming lunar crests and valleys.

Galileo acted quickly to get his observations into print within a year of making them, with his pamphlet provoking his critics to attack the reliability of his instruments themselves, more than what they revealed. Galileo proved himself a shrewd ambassador for this new cosmology, naming some of the discoveries after Medici patrons as to further legitimize them, and he provided telescopes along with copies of the work to those whose quite influence would be felt throughout Europe.

Galileo’s Depiction of Star Positions

A key text of the Scientific Revolution, "Starry Messenger" was not only a refutation of geocentric cosmology, combining natural observations supported by mathematics, but also an inclusive methodology transformative to human thought as the relation of what was observed and one that invited others to confirm his observations by making their own.

"...some of the most important discoveries in scientific literature"
(PMM).

REFERENCES:

Cinti 26; Dibner, Heralds of Science 7; Grolier/Horblit 35; Norman 855; PMM 113 (This copy is without the pasted cancel slip correcting "Cosmica" to "Medicea" in the heading on B1r often found; after examination of 83 copies Paul Needham believes that the works that travelled north of the Alps at an early date were without this amendment in the dedication [Nick Wilding, Galileo's Idol, Chicago 2014, p. 109]).

PROVENANCE:

Giancarlo Beltrame (his sale, Christie's London, 13 July 2016, lot 41, £314,500)