Galileo's Birthday -- Astronomer, Scientist

from Writer's Almanac (Garrison Keillor, American Public Media):

February 15 is the birthday of scientist and writer Galileo Galilei, born in Pisa, Italy (1564), who defended the scientific belief that the Earth was not the center of the Universe and was tried by the Roman Inquisition for heresy. He once prophesied that, in the future, "There will be opened a gateway and a road to a large and excellent science into which minds more piercing than mine shall penetrate to recesses still deeper."
Galileo was a mathematics professor at Padua when he first heard about a new invention from the Netherlands, the telescope. When he couldn't get his hands on one to even look at, he worked out the mechanics on his own. The spyglass everyone had been talking about could magnify objects to three times their original size. The instrument Galileo made with lenses he ground himself, magnified all the way up to 20 times. He was able to see the valleys and mountains of the moon, the Milky Way, and to discover four moons of Jupiter. In 1610, Galileo published the story of his telescope and the results of his studies as The Starry Messenger.
Galileo had been corresponding with German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who also believed that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the solar system. Kepler had been urging Galileo to go public with his theories for years and, though Galileo was tried and convicted by the Church for heresy, he was never tortured or excommunicated as the dominant narrative goes--in reality, he remained a loyal Catholic his entire life.