With the shorter days of December came winter, and clouds. On those nights he read, or caught up on his sleep, if he could. But on many a night he woke every hour or two, his brain full of stars, and went out to check the sky. If it had cleared, he would stir the coals of the kitchen fire and put a pot of mulled wine on the grate, add a few sticks and go out to set up the glass, feeling that swirl of dust in the blood that he loved so much. He was on the hunt all right, and never had he had such a quarry! Nothing could keep him from looking when the night was clear. If his day work had to sufferand it didso be it. Those bastard pregadi didnt deserve his work anyway.
He had ordered one of the worktables moved onto the terrace next to the garden, and placed under a table umbrella next to a couch. He had a lantern that could be shuttered, and workbooks, inkpots, and quills; and three spyglasses on tripods, each with different strengths and occlusions. Lastly, blankets to throw over his shoulders. Mazzoleni and the cook kept things running in the mornings while he slept, and stocked the supplies for his nighttime needs; both were the kind of person who falls asleep at sunset, so they didnt see him at work unless he forced them to. After a while, he never did. He liked being by himself through the frosty nights, looking at first one thing and then another.
On the night of January 7, 1610, he was out looking at the planets. As he had written in a letter he was composing for young Antonio Medici: The planets are seen very rotund, like little full moons, and of a roundness bounded and without rays. But the fixed stars do not appear so; rather they are seen fulgurous and trembling, much more with the glass than without, and so irradiated that what shape they possess is not revealed.
So the planets, being obvious little disks, were interesting. And Jupiter was now in the west after sunset. It was the biggest of the planets in the glassno surprise to anyone used to the way it dominated the night sky whenever it was visible.
Galileo got it in the middle of the eyepiece, and then saw that there were three bright stars to left and right of it, aligned with it in the plane of the ecliptic. He marked their position on a new sheet of his letter to Antonio, and looked at them for a long time. They did not twinkle like the stars, but gleamed steadily. They were almost perfectly on a line with each other. They were almost as bright as Jupiter, or even brighter, although smaller. Jupiter itself was a very distinct disk.
On the night of January 7, 1610, he was out looking at the planets. As he had written in a letter he was composing for young Antonio Medici: The planets are seen very rotund, like little full moons, and of a roundness bounded and without rays. But the fixed stars do not appear so; rather they are seen fulgurous and trembling, much more with the glass than without, and so irradiated that what shape they possess is not revealed.
So the planets, being obvious little disks, were interesting. And Jupiter was now in the west after sunset. It was the biggest of the planets in the glassno surprise to anyone used to the way it dominated the night sky whenever it was visible.
Galileo got it in the middle of the eyepiece, and then saw that there were three bright stars to left and right of it, aligned with it in the plane of the ecliptic. He marked their position on a new sheet of his letter to Antonio, and looked at them for a long time. They did not twinkle like the stars, but gleamed steadily. They were almost perfectly on a line with each other. They were almost as bright as Jupiter, or even brighter, although smaller. Jupiter itself was a very distinct disk.
The next night he looked at Jupiter again, and was shocked to find that the three stars were still there, but this time all to the west of the great planet, whereas on the previous night two of them had been to its east. He wondered if the ephemerides for the night was wrong.
On January 9 it was cloudy, and nothing could be seen. But the night of January 10 was clear again.
This time only two of the bright stars were there, both to the east of Jupiter. One was slightly less bright than the other, though on the previous nights they had all been the same.
Mystifiedintrigued to the point of obsessionGalileo started a new sheet in his workbook, and copied there the diagrams he had already written in at the end of the letter to Antonio. The letter itself he put aside, as being premature.
In his new desire for night, the days themselves passed slowly, and he did the necessary work without paying the slightest attention to it, as if dreaming on his feet. This was a sign, well-recognized by the household: he was on the hunt. And just as they never woke sleepwalkers for fear of damaging their sanity, they left him alone at these times, and kept the boys quiet and the students at bay, and put food in him almost as if spoon-feeding a baby. Of course, it was true he would beat them if they distracted him, but they enjoyed the craft of it too.
On the night of January 12, Galileo trained the glass on Jupiter in the last moments of twilight. At first he could see again only two of the little bright stars, but an hour later, when it was fully dark, he checked again, and one more had become visible, very close to Jupiters eastern side.
He drew arrows trying to clarify to himself how they were moving, shifting his attention between the view through the glass and his sketches on the page. Suddenly it became clear, there in the reiterated sketches: the four stars were moving around Jupiter, orbiting it in the same way the moon orbited the Earth. He was seeing circular orbits edge-on; they lay nearly in a single plane, which was also very close to the plane of the ecliptic, in which the planets themselves moved.
He straightened up, blinking away the tears in his eyes that always came from looking too long, and that this time came also from the sudden surge of an emotion he couldnt give a name to, a kind of joy that was also shot with fear. Ah, he said. A touch of the sacred, right on the back of his neck: God had tapped him. He was ringing.
No one had ever seen this before. People had seen the moon, had seen the stars; they had never seen this. I primi al mondo! The first man to see Jupiters four moons, which had been circling it since the creation.
Everything he had seen over the last week fell into place. He stood, staggering a little under the impact of the idea, and circled the work-table as if imitating a moon. When there had been only two dots, the others could have been behind the big planetor before it. And he saw also that the orbiting moon now outermost could perhaps have moved so far away from Jupiter as to be outside his eyepieces little circle. The shifts in position suggested they were moving fairly quickly. Earths moon took only twenty-eight and a half days for its orbit. These four seemed faster, and perhaps could be moving at differing speeds, just as the planets moved at differing speeds in the sky.
If he were right, then he could expect to see several more things. Seeing the orbits side-on, the moons would appear to slow down as they approached their maximum distance from Jupiter, and be fastest when right next to it. They would also disappear when behind it (or before it) in a regular pattern, and always reappear on the other side, never on the same side. Repeated observations should make it possible to sort out which moon was which, and determine which orbited closest to Jupiter and which farthest away. Knowing that would help him to calculate each orbital period, and that would allow him to keep steady track of them, and even predict where they would be, in a Jovian ephemerides of his own device.
My God, he said, overwhelmed at these thoughts, suddenly weeping, feeling he should fall to his knees to say a prayer in thanks to Godonly his knees were too stiff; he was too cold. Anyway, it was looking through the glass that was the prayer. Im the first in the world!
Whichwhen he recovered from the awe of itreally should be something he could turn to advantage. A truly new thing in the worldhow could it not be useful? He had to hop about in the frigid night air to express his happiness. Mazzoleni and the rest would have laughed to see it, as they had laughed all the times they had seen it, after one good discovery or another. But none so good as this! He chortled; he shuffled around the terrace in a dance with the spyglass as his partner. He felt an urge to ring the workshop bell; he even began to walk toward the workshop, to wake Mazzoleni and the rest, to share the news with somebody. But he was the bell he wanted to ring, and if he woke the others, Mazzoleni would just nod and grin his gaptoothed grin, and be pleased that the new instrument was working better than the previous one. What went on in the sky did not matter to him.
So Galileo stopped in his tracks and returned to the terrace. He recommenced his little contradance around the tripod and worktable, singing nonsense words to himself under his breath. Tomorrow he would write up his news, and publish it as soon as possible after that, to share it with the world. Everyone would know, everyone would look and see. But only he would be firstfirst always, first forever. Feeling warm in his cloak, he settled on the stool under the tripod to look some more.
Then there came a knock at the garden gate. And he knew who it was.
Chapter three
Entangled
Now I am ready to tell how bodies are changed into different bodies.
I summon the supernatural beings who first contrived
The transmogrifications in the stuff of life.
Reveal, now, exactly how they were performed
From the beginning up to this moment.
Galileo walked stiffly toward the gate, feeling his heart pound. The knock came again, a steady tap tap tap. He reached the gate and pulled up the crossbar, feeling a sweat of trepidation.
Galileo walked stiffly toward the gate, feeling his heart pound. The knock came again, a steady tap tap tap. He reached the gate and pulled up the crossbar, feeling a sweat of trepidation.