Briton drew pictures of the moon before Galileo

Source: Telegraph (UK) (1-14-09)

Drawings of the moon completed by British cartographer Thomas Harriot and
pre-dating Galileo are to go on public display.

The 17th century "moon maps" by Harriot appear to reveal that the Englishman
preceded the famous Italian scientist in viewing the moon through a
telescope.
One of Harriot's drawings is dated July 26 1609, six months prior to
Galileo's well documented achievement in December 1609.

The lunar drawings by Harriot will form part of an exhibition at West Sussex
Record Office in Chichester in July to mark the International Year of
Astronomy.
Harriot studied at St. Mary's Hall, University of Oxford, took his degree in
1580, and went to London. Here he was employed by Sir Walter Ralegh and in
1585 went with the expedition to Virginia organized by Ralegh as
cartographer and one versed in the theory of navigation--in our terms, as
staff scientist. Harriot returned in 1586 and wrote an account of Virginia
and its natives, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia
, published in 1588.

Hariot's 1588 text was re-published in the 1590 Theodore de Bry edition of A
Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia" along with de
Bry's engravings of the John White's watercolors preserved in the British
Museum, some of which shown in the exhibition "A New World: England's First
View of America," at the Jamestown Settlement last July 15 through October
15, 2008.
Except for A Brief and True Report, Harriot published no books. At his death
he left a large number of manuscripts on various scientific subjects, and
over the past three centuries these have slowly come into the mainstream of
historical research. Harriot studied optics (about which he corresponded
with Johannes Kepler) and had discovered what is now known as Snell's Law of
refraction before Snell did, he made important contributions to algebra,
and, from 1609 to 1613, he made numerous telescopic observations. His
telescopic drawing of the Moon of early August 1609 is the first on record
and preceded Galileo's study of the Moon by several months.

Harriot's observation of sunspots of December 1610 is also the first on
record. But although Harriot shared his observations with a group of
correspondents in England, he did not publish them. The executors of his
estate published a small portion of his mathematical work under the title
Artis Analyticae Praxis (1627).


-- 
Jon Kukla
www.JonKukla.com

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