COVE

The Codex Leicester, later renamed the Codex Hammer, was one of da Vinci's many scientific journals. It was published in 1510 and its contence mainly focused on his ideas on water and the moon.  An interesting note about this text is the "mirror image" style it is written in, meaning that it should be read from right to left, appearing normally in its reflection.  The Codex als holds the record for the second largest price tag, purchased by Bill Gates in 1994 for $30.8 million dollars, making the manuscript also the only of da Vinci's journals to be privatly owned.

After making vast improvments in the telescope in 1609, Galileo was able to make detailed observations of various planets as well as the moon.  One such observation was that the moon was not the perfect spherical surface society assumed it to be, but rather was made up of various valleys, plains, and moutains much like the Earth's surface.  This gave further insight into da Vinci's observations on the various dark spots scattered throughout the moon's surface.  These discoveries were particularly radical since the moon, like the planets, were through to be perfect celestial beings and the thought of them containing imperfections would have been highly controversial.