Galileo published The Starry Messenger, a booklet explaining his discoveries that the moon was not flat and smooth, but a sphere with mountains and craters.  These findings were made possible by the telescope, a recent invention Galileo learned of in July of 1609.  He learned to make his own, 32 times as powerful. He discovered Jupiter’s moons, now called Galileon moons.  His discoveries supported the Coppernicous theory that Celestial bodies rotate around each other. This view contradicted the Church’s doctrine and therefore was labeled heresy. This image is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.