The head artist Sergio and his assistant Francesco come face to face with Galileo Galilei.

UNESCO: Venice contribution to the exhibition on Cultures and Developments | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

On August 25th 1609 an Italian mathematician called Galileo Galilei demonstrated his newly constructed telescope to the merchants of Venice.

ECONOMIST: In praise of astronomy, the most revolutionary of sciences

In 1609, Italian philosopher and physicist Galileo Galilei used descriptions of Lippershey's gadget to build his own telescope, and with it he was able to observe the Earth, the Moon and several planets in our solar system in detail for the first time.

FORBES: No. 17: The Telescope

Galileo's most remarkable discoveries, however, and the ones that dictated that it would eventually follow the probe's fiery fate, were made not about Jupiter itself, but (appropriately) about the four large Jovian moons discovered by Galileo Galilei, the 17th-century astronomer after whom the craft was named.

ECONOMIST: Galileo and Jupiter