Does Galileo Galilei deserve yet another notch in his belt? Besides discovering four of Jupiter's moons, studying sunspots, observing the phases of Venus, and examining the rough mountains and craters of the moon, Galileo may also have identified the planet Neptune more than two centuries before its official discovery, one researcher is arguing.
Its widely accepted that in 1612 and again in 1613 Galileo must have observed Neptune, although at the time he thought it was a star, spotted during his observation of Jupiter’s moons. But physicist David Jamieson from the University of Melbourne, Australia, says that history has judged Galileo incorrectly – and that his notebooks reveal that he knew he was looking at a planet after all [Nature blog].
We know that Galileo spotted Neptune through his telescope because his notebook drawings of the night sky in 1612 and 1613 include a mysterious "star" near Jupiter, in a ...
