alt.hn

3/5/2026 at 4:47:27 PM

Galileo's handwritten notes found in ancient astronomy text

 https://www.science.org/content/article/galileo-s-handwritten-notes-found-ancient-astronomy-text

by tzury

3/7/2026 at 1:32:44 AM

I have had the experience of serendipitous discovery when researching relatively recent history. To find Galileo’s handwriting 400 years later, effectively engaging in both agreement and debate with Ptolemy through the latter’s work… even though he specifically was looking for it, it still must have been surreal.

by macintux

3/7/2026 at 2:35:05 AM

> even though he specifically was looking for it

The historian was looking for conceptual connections between Ptolemy and Galileo, but the discovery of Galileo’s handwriting in Ptolemy’s book seemed to be a surprise.

by divbzero

3/7/2026 at 2:42:57 AM

I interpreted the fact that he was reviewing multiple copies of the same text as him searching for Galileo’s notes, but I suppose it’s possible that the motivation was the possibility of discrepancies between printings.

by macintux

3/7/2026 at 3:09:18 PM

Owen Gingerich was a historian of astronomy who did a census of printed early editions of Copernicus' book De revolutionibus. He found a tradition of students copying annotations from teachers readings into their own copies of the book. I recollect that he was able to trace various traditions of commentary each stemming from a well known astronomy teacher.

I suppose that checking early printings of key works looking for annotations is a pretty standard thing to do now.

by 2b3a51

3/7/2026 at 11:11:28 AM

The Almagest was hand written about 1400 years before Galileo lived, so it's not so much looking at different printings as at different editions that are based on different set of copies of the copies of the copies etc, further many editors would try to "fix" the ancient work, removing material they didn't like and adding their own stuff or material from other works... it can get very messy.

by SiempreViernes

3/7/2026 at 2:41:58 AM

> I have had the experience of serendipitous discovery when researching relatively recent history.

I would really love to hear about this. (:

by Diederich

3/7/2026 at 2:47:40 AM

Nothing all that exciting, just pleasure from finding a photo in a local newspaper of my great-great-grandfather’s (approximately, I don’t remember the specifics at the moment) car being pulled by horses out of a local river, or researching a family name I found in a cemetery and finding interesting tidbits about their history.

Probably the most impressive effort I stumbled upon was a woman from rural Indiana who collected (and typed up) thousands of pages of local history & genealogy in the mid-20th century. Was interesting reading personal accounts of Morgan’s Raid, for example.

by macintux

3/7/2026 at 7:35:20 AM

It’s unbelievable how that 16th century book looks like it is written in LaTeX. Or plain TeX, probably, given its age XD

by gignico

3/7/2026 at 8:55:22 AM

Not that surprising if you consider that books before the Gutenberg printing press were artisans work of art that required years of work of specialists.

In other words: Today some of those will cost more than a Ferrari to make. They use Vellum paper that is much better that today's but require killing hundreds of animals each.

Only very rich people could afford that. I had access to European books collections of the 16th that are in Color, much much better than any normal book we have.

If you think about that it is normal. Color require more printing plates in a printer, but just changing your ink if you do it manually.

by cladopa

3/7/2026 at 1:23:04 PM

> They use Vellum paper that is much better that today's but require killing hundreds of animals each.

Yes, but also, it's more of byproduct. You raise sheep for wool, they're going to lamb every year, you eat most of the lambs, someone buys some of the skins to turn onto vellum.

The processing to produce vellum would be expensive, and not something every shepherd would be making at home, but the input sheepskin would be plentiful.

by saalweachter

3/7/2026 at 8:09:14 AM

Not at all surprising. There were some "unshakable truths" in typesetting that basically held up from Gutenberg until the Internet came along. Knuth (partly through his friend Zapf) is well aware of them and respected them in TeX.

It's relatively recent that we've found out some of these "universal" rules might not have been so important all along and together with technology as another factor things changed.

by weinzierl

3/7/2026 at 10:47:27 AM

It's not unlikely that Donald Knuth looked at examples of 16th Century typesetting when he came to design TeX. Or looked at examples of typesetting that had been influenced by 16th Century typsetting.

by tristramb

3/7/2026 at 9:47:21 PM

He studied them diligently. His book Digital Typography gives lengthy accounts of his research and includes photographs and examples of how he chose various aspects.

by ternaryoperator

3/7/2026 at 10:06:19 AM

Really? Because what TeX did was make it possible to write "proper" books or formal texts via a computer - that was the whole point

A 16th-century formal book like this would be the gold standard to replicate if you want to make "serious" texts. And yes, in scientific literature, the "serious" text is a narrow target and far narrower than you might expect from the possible variation in a handmade artisanal work. Mostly because when everything is "custom", standardization and regular structure is exceptional

by Aerolfos

3/7/2026 at 3:44:24 AM

That's not "ancient". That word often means thousand(s) of years ago.

by behnamoh

3/7/2026 at 4:21:52 AM

>The pages belonged to The Almagest, in which second century polymath Claudius Ptolemy described his vision of an Earth-centered cosmos.

Where's the article wrong?

by kgeist

3/7/2026 at 12:52:16 PM

Galileos notes where found in a 16th century print of The Almagest.

If you copy the pythagorean theorem onto a page and cross it out, would you be "defacing an ancient text"?

by josefx

3/7/2026 at 3:46:13 AM

I clicked just to make this same pedantic comment, fellow traveller.

by jswelker

3/7/2026 at 6:13:51 AM

pedantry works best when correct.

"Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history through late antiquity."

Perhaps you are mixing up "ancient" and "prehistoric".

by ant6n

3/7/2026 at 12:33:54 PM

Galileo lived in the 16th century. Late antiquity ends around the end of the Western Roman Empire I think, which was before 500AD!?

by brabel

3/7/2026 at 3:36:48 PM

But the text his notes were found in is ancient

by edgyquant

3/7/2026 at 7:01:51 PM

No it isn’t, unless you date reprints to first edition publication.

by lostlogin

3/9/2026 at 5:59:59 AM

They don't refer to an ancient book. They refer to an ancient text, as well as ancient wisdom.

by ant6n

3/7/2026 at 5:12:55 AM

Not particularly important, but the title adding "handwritten" implies that they had non-handwritten notes too...

by ffsm8

3/7/2026 at 5:21:28 AM

Or it implies they were handwritten by Galileo himself vs his words written by someone rlse

by sjdrc

3/7/2026 at 5:18:27 AM

Dictated? Transcribed?

by mock-possum

3/7/2026 at 2:02:50 PM

He who is valiant and pure of spirit will find the holy grail in the castle of aaaeeerrrrr...

by dotancohen

3/7/2026 at 8:53:00 AM

Fun facts, the patron of Almagest Abassid Caliph Al-Ma'mun was also the founder of Baitul Hikmah in Baghdad that was aggressively translating important foreign manuscripts due to weight gold equivalence for Greek/Indian/etc manucsripts translation compensation [1],[2].

According to history, the Caliph once back off his plan of conquering Constantinople (that were later achieved by Ottoman Caliph Fatih) due the Roman (Byzantine) offered him an offer he cannot refused, the original copy of Ptolemy Almagest as important part of the truce arrangements. He certainly capable of overcoming and conquering the Constatinople since during his time, Afghanistan was conquered under Islamic rule for hundred of years that modern Russia and USA cannot achieved. The fact that his mother Marajil, was a princess originally from Afghanistan. This is where the popular saying that asserted only Afghanistan people can conquer Afghanistan. Point in case, the most recent Afghanistan conqurer was Mughal Empire, who was originated from Indian sub-continent Afghanistan. During his time, Al-Khwarizmi published his infamous Algebra book namely Kitāb al-Mukhtaṣar fī Ḥisāb al-Jabr wal-Muqābalah (The Concise Book of Calculation by Restoration and Balancing), where we got the word algebra, and from his name Al-Khwarizmi now we have the word "algorithm" [2].

In addition to having translation Baitul Hikmah in Baghdad, Iraq and in other Islamic knowledge center in Toledo Spain (before fall to Spanish Christian and started the European Renaissance), the Islamic civilization also engaged in contributing to science, math, astronomy, etc. Al-Haitham (Alhazen), the founder of optics, and he's also the founder of modern scientific methodology [3].

Having said that, there several Islamic astronomers (Arab/Persian/etc) already proposing against the geocentric idea that most probably that was inspired Galileo. I think he most probably did not come with the original idea of heliocentric model and the Islamic astromoners mosy probably have proposed it before Galileo, but he failed to credit them properly as normally practiced by European scientists at the time.

[1] al-Ma'mun:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ma%27mun

[2] Graeco-Arabic translation movement:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeco-Arabic_translation_move...

[3] Ibn al-Haytham:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham

by teleforce

3/7/2026 at 11:50:28 AM

There are a number of factual mistakes, misleading/unclear statements and speculation in your "fun facts".

Al-Ma'mun failed to conquer Byzantium and died while preparing his next attempt to do so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ma'mun

He cannot possibly have been the patron of the Almagest as Ptolemy lived centuries before he did. Maybe you mean of a translation.

Everyone knows Galileo did not originate a heliocentric model, because he was promoting the Copernican model.

Heliocentric models had been proposed by ancient Greeks, but the Copernican model was a huge advance. There is big difference between just speculating that the sun was the centre of the the universe and an actual mathematical mode.

There is a lot more to the scientific method than al-Haytham's minor contribution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

by graemep

3/7/2026 at 10:30:07 PM

>He cannot possibly have been the patron of the Almagest as Ptolemy lived centuries before he did. Maybe you mean of a translation.

The Almagest version of the Galileo notes in the OP article is the Latin translation of the Arabic translation by Gerard of Cremona in Toledo around 1175. This makes Al-Ma'mun the patron of Almagest [1].

I've also mentioned that according to history he accepted the offer of the original copy of Almagest (Almajisti) in Greek from the Roman (Byzantine) emperor the time for a truce.

>Heliocentric models had been proposed by ancient Greeks, but the Copernican model was a huge advance. There is big difference between just speculating that the sun was the centre of the the universe and an actual mathematical mode.

The Islamic scholars were not speculating they were the original and earlier researchers of the heliocentric model that Copernicus and Galileo were famous for. It's not even an exxageration to say that both of them were very highly dependent of Islamic scholars work on the required mathematics and the earlier astronomy works (translations, original books contributions, cellestial tables like al-Zij the 11th-century Toledan Tables) as the OP article indicated. Most of these original works by Islamic have been lost and many have not throughly studied. I will argue that Copernicus himself most probably plagiarated some if not all his works from the Islamic scholars wothout properly attributing the original Islamic scholars' sources. Heck the so called telescope invention by Galileo was invented by Islamic scientists several hundreds years before him [2].

>There is a lot more to the scientific method than al-Haytham's minor contribution

Al-Haytham or Alhazen is father of scientific methods, nothing minor about that. One of his famous work of hundreds of books was his seven volumes work in the form His most influential work is titled Kitāb al-Manāẓir (Book of Optics), written during 1011–1021, only survived in a Latin edition. Guess what, Isaac Newton did not even bother to cite and refer to these seminal books by Al-Haytham when he wrote his masterpiece three volumes book on optics namely Opticks: A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light published in English in 1704. For this I will confidently say that Newton of plagiarism since he definitely know about these books in Latin since he's highly proficient in Latin. Heck, Isaac he wrote his greatest masterpiece, the Principia Mathematica, entirely in Latin.

The will and audacity to whitewash Islamic scholar contributions are beyond believe. They even had to change the name from Ibnu Sina to Avicennia, Al-Haytham to Alhazen, Ibnu Rush to Averroes, etc. These Arabics name can be represented in Latin easily. Imagine renaming Ramanujan as Rothman.

[1] Gerard of Cremona’s Latin translation of the Almagest and the revision of tables

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00218286221140848

[2] How a Muslim invented the Telescope centuries before Galileo:

https://www.secondgoldenage.com/p/how-a-muslim-invented-the-...

by teleforce

3/7/2026 at 6:58:22 PM

Beyond the facts corrected by other user, graemep, the translator school was in fact established after the christian kingdom of Castile conquer the city of Toledo, and the king Alfonso X [1], actually is what is studied as main promoter of it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_School_of_Translator

Then, first heliocentrism with some approximations of size and distance, as far as I know was Aristarchus of Samos, but there is not much that we know about it. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos

by hiro1986

3/8/2026 at 12:19:57 AM

>Beyond the facts corrected by other user, graemep, the translator school was in fact established after the christian kingdom of Castile conquer the city of Toledo, and the king Alfonso X [1].

I have replied to the other users comments, please check them out.

The Toledan school/library/knowledge centers were not established by king Alfonso, it was continued by him when he captured Toledo from the Islamic Spain Empire in 11th CE [1]. Case in point, the venerable and infamous Toledan Tables were compiled in the 11th century (around 1080) by a group of Arabic astronomers in Toledo, Spain (Al-Andalus), led by the renowned astronomer Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī (known in Latin as Arzachel). They were essentially the Zij of Toledo, drawing heavily on earlier zijat from the Islamic world, like those of al-Khwarizmi and al-Battani [2].

The Andalusian parts, however, continue under the muslim rule for several centuries until the genocide and the ethnic cleansing of the muslim and the jews during the final phase of Reconquista in the 15th CE. It ended nearly 800 years of muslim era in Spain which is so far longer than European have been in the American continents [3].

Credit to the Spanish and the European when they make the most of the capture of Toledo centers with all the translated and original books, thus kickstarted the Renaissance age, since before they were in the dark ages [4].

Another fun facts, the Almagest version of the Galileo notes in the OP article is the Latin translation of Almagest by Gerard of Cremona in Toledo around 1175, from the Arabic translation of Almagest performed in the House of Wisdom (or Baitul Hikmah). This makes Al-Ma'mun the patron of the Almagest mentioned the OP article [5].

[1] Reconquista:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconquista

[2] Toledan Tables:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledan_Tables

[3] Siege of Toledo (1085):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Toledo_(1085)

[4] Dark Ages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)

[5] House of Wisdom:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom

by teleforce

3/8/2026 at 1:12:26 PM

I maybe didn't express it clearly. Translations started before Christian rule, and continue and were formalized under Christian rule, being King Alfonso one main promoter and actually had Muslims, Jews and Christians translators.

King Alfonso promoted what Raymund of Toledo started, the former school, and for example the Toledan tables where later updated through the Alfonsine tables[1]. Your example of translation by Gerard of Cremona was under the bishop, not under Muslim rule. I am not neglecting the immense knowledge combined of Latin/Greek to Arab and Al-Andalus scholars, Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī (Arzachel) was fundamental and a very important Muslim scholar, who was born and lived in Toledo. I was trying to add the fact that translation was further done under Castilian rule.

Some inaccuracies, maybe not relevant, but for any reading. Toledo in 1085 was not part of an empire, was a small Taifa kingdom, [1]. Also, Spain didn't exist as political entity, and it won't until the marriage of Isabel and Fernando and conquer of Granada, forming modern Spain.

Reconquista is not viewed as an actual historical movement during medieval times, check your own link, it was a 19th century build up nationalistic view. Iberian medieval times are complicated. Dark ages is also a not very used concept anymore, from your own link.

There was 800 years of Muslim rule in some parts of the peninsula, but what that implies compared to America is not clear to me. The Iberian peninsula has been settled with plenty of European, north-African, and middle-east ancestry in current Spaniards[3,4]. Spain (and Portugal also in the Iberian Peninsula :-) ) is the result of this mix, including Tartasso, Iberian, Roman, Al-Andalus, Asturias, ... not a independent entity from them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonsine_tables [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taifa_of_Toledo [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Moriscos [4] The Genetic Legacy of Religious Diversity and Intolerance: Paternal Lineages of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula doi://10.1016/j.ajhg.2008.11.007

by hiro1986

3/7/2026 at 9:06:31 AM

> Al-Khwarizmi published his infamous algebra book

Math can be hard, but calling that book "infamous" is a bit too much... /s

by darkwater

3/7/2026 at 2:39:26 AM

What a wild find. Good for the historian.

by mrose11

3/7/2026 at 6:39:45 AM

Galileo Galilei, and yet people still refer to him by his firstname alone. It's painful to read.

It is, as if we refer to Isaac and Albert when speaking about Gravity and Relativity.

by ocean2

3/7/2026 at 8:13:00 AM

In Italy it's extremely usual to refer to the greatests of the great people of those ages by their given name: Leonardo, Galileo, Dante, Michelangelo. It's testament to their greatness. There is only one Dante that matters, so there is no need to add Alighieri but if you do nobody notices anything strange. It's only a bit redundant. Using only the surname would be unusual.

by pmontra

3/7/2026 at 6:47:53 AM

There are many Isaacs and Alberts. How many notable Galileo(s, not to use Galilei) do we have?

by spockz

3/7/2026 at 7:30:00 AM

His name works like "Bostoner from Boston", so it was reasonable for him at the time to refer to himself as just Bostoner.

by 9dev

3/7/2026 at 8:54:01 AM

I have always been intrigued by the similarity of Italian naming conventions and that of the Arabs and Persians.

Resident of, son of, father of, family of. Leonardo of Pisa of the family of Bonacci being another well known one.

I suppose it is not specific to those cultures and was a more widespread convention.

by srean