The telescope, or "spyglass" as it was then called, had been invented barely a year before Galileo made his revolutionary discoveries in 1609 and 1610. You have two advantages using MicroObservatory over Galileo's spyglass. The MicroObservatory telescopes are bigger, so they gather more light from faint stars, and the telescopes are equipped with electronic detectors that collect and store the light, allowing you to study the images the next day. Galileo had to rely on his eyes and memory!

To compare your images to Galileo's observations and sketches, and see what is being discovered now, 400 years later.

Download our MicroObservatory Image Processing software to enhance your Galileo images, and make your own gallery of images to compare to those of Galileo. Because of the significance of Galileo's discoveries and how they revolutionized our understanding of the Universe, 2009 has been declared International Year of Astronomy by the United Nations.