December 28th - Neptune Observed

On this day, in 1612, Galileo Galilei was the first astronomer to observe the planet Neptune, but he mistakenly thought it was a fixed star. A fixed star is any object in the sky that doesn't seem to move with the stars that twinkle in the sky. Our Sun is an example of a fixed star, as is Britney Spears before she went downhill again.

Galileo Galilei is a great mind from history who has a very fun name. He contributed plenty to astronomy; he was the first to observe the phases of Venus, he discovered Jupiter's four largest moons, and he even observed sunspots and wrote about them in his feelings journal. Originally, he named the moons after his patrons, but modern astronomers have renamed the moons The Galilean satellites. They really are too kind.

Galileo's arch-nemesis was the planet Saturn. He observed Saturn and its rings through his puny home-made telescope. He thought Saturn and the rings were actually a three-body system, otherwise known as a ménage à trois. When the rings aligned with the Earth it seemed to Galileo that two of the three bodies had disappeared leaving only Saturn. Then the rings changed alignment and they reappeared as if by magic. This confused Galileo even more and he went to his grave not knowing that Saturn was a ringed planet. His last word was SATURN!!!

Neptune is not a great mind from history. Instead, it is the fourth largest, great planet in our solar system, which is the best solar system. Actually, it is fourth largest by diameter and third largest by mass. In astronomy terms this means it "punches above its weight".

A scumbag called Urbain Le Vernier has gone down in history as the discoverer of Neptune because Galileo didn't realise it was a planet. Mr Le Vernier sat in his comfy office, by a warm fire and predicted that Neptune existed by using mathematics and observations of a disturbance in Uranus' orbit. How right he was in his warm study surrounded by his piles of concubines and friendly bloodhounds. All the while Galileo was out in the field doing the hard yards, squinting at Saturn. It's not fair.

Neptune is a gas giant. [Joke removed]. Its atmosphere consists of hydrogen and helium and hydrocarbons. Unlike boring Uranus, Neptune has an active weather system. The ten day prediction for Neptune shows wind gusts up to 2100km/h, so please ensure garden furniture is stowed safely inside.

Galileo did more than just not discover Neptune and get confused by Saturn. He also annoyed the Church. The Bible clearly states that the world cannot be moved, but Galileo was a heliocentrist, which isn't really word but it means someone who believes the Sun is the centre of the universe and the Earth moves around it. This view was in contradiction to the Church's view that the Earth was the centre of the universe and didn't move.

The matter simmered for a number of years and eventually Galileo was tried for heresy. He was found guilty and sentenced in three parts. First, he had to declare that his heliocentric beliefs were wrong, and from that point on he had to abjure, curse, and detest that opinion. Second, he was imprisoned and then placed under house arrest. Third, his current and future publications were banned, which meant he never released his twenty volumes on "That Bastard Saturn."

There is a tale that after Galileo recanted his beliefs he muttered the famous phrase "And yet it moves." There is no evidence that he actually said this, and even if there was there is no evidence that he wasn't talking about a rather portly lady in the public gallery.

Galileo contributed a lot to astronomy using only a crap, home-made telescope. Think of what he could have squinted at if he had all of today's technology like the Hubble space telescope.