Lunar mountains and craters
Montañas y cráteres de la Luna
- Date
- 1609 · confidence high
- Place
- Padua, Republic of Venice, Italy
- Credited to
- Galileo Galilei
- People
- 👤 Galileo Galilei1564–1642
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
With his telescope Galileo saw that the Moon has mountains, valleys and craters, and measured their height from their shadows. The Moon was a world like the Earth, not a perfect sphere.
Thomas Harriot had drawn the Moon through a telescope months earlier in England, without publishing it.
What it led to
- Selenography
- Breakdown of the sky-Earth divide
- Sidereus Nuncius and telescopic astronomy
Built on
Made possible
- Martian 'canali' and Mars mapping1877
- Lunar maps