On a clear night in July of 1609, English polymath Thomas Harriot pointed his “Dutch perspective glass” toward the crescent moon. The crude lunar map he sketched from his observations dates him as the ...

Four hundred years ago, our concept of the universe was very different from today’s. Up until 1609, all astronomical knowledge had been gained strictly by interpreting naked eye observations. There ...

On Jan. 7, 1610, Galileo discovered four moons revolving around Jupiter — a discovery that would change his life forever. These four moons are Jupiter’s largest satellites — lo, Europa, Ganymede and ...

In August, we reported that a letter presumably written by Galileo Galilei—part of the collection of the University of Michigan's library—was actually a forgery, along with a similar document in the ...

In “Our Moon,” Rebecca Boyle elucidates how Earth’s closest neighbor makes us what — and who — we are. By Katrina Miller The unmasking of a fake Galileo manuscript this summer brought renewed ...

A manuscript attributed to Galileo Galilei found to be a forgery in August has led to the discovery that a different, controversial book was authored by the celebrated Italian astronomer. When you ...

On this date, Jan. 17, 2002, the Galileo probe made it’s 33 rd pass of Jupiter’s moon, Io. After Voyager 1’s pass in 1979, Io was dubbed the most volcanically active place in the solar system. Galileo ...

NASA says that the camera aboard the Galileo Jupiter orbiter which flew to within 200km (120 miles) of the surface of the moon on 5 August may have worked for some time longer than previously thought.

on Thursday in the veteran spacecraft’s last and closest flyby of any of the giant planet’s four major moons. Io’s volcanoes have presented many surprises since they were first seen in 1979 by NASA’s ...

On November 5, 2002, NASA's old Galileo spacecraft was almost out of fuel. But the Jupiter mission still had some science to do. ‘On This Day in Space’ Video Series on Space.com Galileo flew by a ...

In a groundbreaking revelation that has reshaped the way we look at our Solar System, Nasa's Galileo spacecraft made a discovery in the late 1990s that sent shockwaves through the scientific community ...