this page honors Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"... with the aid of the spyglass, [the Milky Way] may be observed so well that all the disputes that for so many generations haved vexed philosophers are destroyed by visible certainty, and we are liberated from wordy arguments. For the Galaxy is nothing else than a congeries of innumerable stars distributed in clusters. To whatever region of it you direct your spyglass, an immense number of stars immediately offer themselves to view ..."