Thomas Harriot, Three drawings of the Moon

INTRODUCTION
- Man and the stars
SECTION I
- The dawn of astronomy: Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Biblical Cosmos
SECTION II
- The cosmos becomes a sphere
SECTION III
- The geometry of the cosmos
SECTION IV
- The skies of Islam
SECTION V
- Evangelisation of the cosmos
SECTION VI
- The Renaissance of Astronomy
SECTION VII
- Galileo: the cosmos through the telescope
SECTION VIII
- From Galileo to Newton

Set of uncut printed gores and polar caps of the Moon

Thomas Harriot, Three drawings of the Moon

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Thomas Harriot (1560-1621)
Three drawings of the Moon, 1609-1611
Petworth, The Egremont Collection

Four months before Galileo pointed his telescope at the Moon, Harriot used a telescope with a magnifying power of 6x in August 1609 to conduct the first recorded observations of the Earth's satellite (1st drawing). He resumed his observations after Galileo's discoveries (2nd and 3rd drawings), going on to produce the first map of the Moon in 1611.