Twinkle, Twinkle

Dr. Robert Agnew (shown above sitting atop an ancient Mayan observatory in Mexico) is a Professor of Music and Humanities at Edison State College in Piqua, Ohio. Born in Youngstown, Ohio, Robert has a Masters Degree from Bowling Green State University and a Ph.D. from Michigan State University.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star: Italian Style

2009 - the International Year of Astronomy - why? - because of the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei, son of the prominent musician Vincenzo Galilei.

Music is mathematics (as the Ancient Greeks understood so well), and consequently Vincenzo Galilei, illustrious musician, lutenist and composer, instructed his son in music and mathematics as well as all the arts and sciences related to it. Galileo had a quick mind, and on hearing of a spyglass developed by the Dutch, he experimented with lenses and came up with a superior telescope to those used in Holland. On August 25, 1609, Galileo demonstrated to a group of Senators from Venice his telescope. Thus we have the first public stargaze.

On a recent trip to Italy I took a photograph of a statue of Galileo Galilei outside of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, a telescope held securely in his hands. Galileo was the first to observe the four brightest moons of Jupiter (now known as the Galilean moons), craters on the Moon, the rings of Saturn (though he saw them as “appendages”), the phases of Venus, and Sun spots.

He also made comments on the myriad of stars within the Milky Way nebula, and realized that because the stars did not appear any larger in the telescope, that they must lie at incredible distances away from the Earth. He wrote it all down in a book called Siderius Nuncius. Since that book was published in 1610, the world has never looked at itself quite the same.

Galileo Galilei may be the best known of Italian astronomers, but the Italians have accomplished many astronomical firsts both before and after Galileo.

The Roman general, statesman and orator Gaius Sulpicius Gallus was also an astronomer who correctly predicted an eclipse of the moon on the night before the battle of Pydna in 168 BCE. Having won the campaign, in part because he could use his knowledge of the eclipse, he returned to Rome, a hero. Later in life he would devote himself entirely to astronomy. There is a crater on the Moon, Sulpicius Gallus, named after him.

In the mid 13th century the Italian astronomer Vitello actually explained, correctly, why stars twinkle. Many ancient theories of this phenomenon bordered on the bizarre. It’s simply the effect of the Earth’s atmosphere on those tiny points of light. Vitello may have answered the Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star part of the famous song, but it was years before How I Wonder What You Are would be satisfactorily understood!

The Italian Giovanni Cassini (1625-1712) was an amazing and tireless astronomical observer. Focusing his attention on the planets, he correctly determined the rotation of the Sun, Mars and Jupiter while a professor of astronomy at Bologna. Perhaps his most famous accomplishment was a study of the Rings of Saturn, in which he was the first to observe a separation in the rings, now known as the Cassini Division. Spending much time with that most beautiful of planets, he also discovered several new Saturnian satellites.

The first asteroid was discovered on January 1, 1801, in the quaint city of Palermo, by the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi (1746-1826). The existence of another planet had been predicted, and it was Piazzi that finally discovered its whereabouts. The asteroid was eventually named Ceres, and was the first of thousands of asteroids to be identified in the Main Belt.

A list of Italian astronomers that contributed to the science of astronomy would number in the hundreds! In the age before electric lights, the night sky blazed over the Italian hills and countryside, and the Italians took advantage of it.

Arrivederci

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