Petri Gassendi Institutio Astronomica: Juxta Hypotheseis Tam Veterum quam Recentiorum. Cui accesserunt Galilei Galilei Nuncius Sidereus; et Johannis Kepleri Dioptrice. Secunda Editio priori correctior by Galileo Galilei - 1642: Galileo's "Starry Messenger" and Kepler's "Dioptrice" Two of the Most Important Books in Early Observational Astronomy

This item is currently on reserve; please contact dealer for more details. Londo: Typis Jacobi Flesher, prostant apud Gulielmum Morden, bibliopolam Cantabrigiensem [and Cornelius Bee], 1653, 1642. Bound in full contemporaryblind tooled sheep recently rebacked with spine lable. The internal text is very generally clean and crisp with only slight aging, it is quite an extrodinary copy. Gassendi's "Institutio Astronomica," has been called the first modern astronomy textbook. It is divided into three sections: the first details the so-called theory of the spheres, the second describes astronomical theory, and the third discusses the conflicting ideas of Brahe and Copernicus.

The present edition is important for the inclusion of two seminal works of telescopic astronomy: Galileo's "Sidereus Nuncius" (first ed. Venice, 1610), in which announces his discovery of Jupiter's moons, and Kepler's "Dioptrice" (first ed. Augsburg, 1611), Kepler's brilliant explanation of how the telescope works.Galileo's Discoveries with the Telescope:"Galileo's 'Starry Messenger' contains some of the most important discoveries in scientific literature. Learning in the summer of 1609 that a device for making distant objects seem close and magnified had been brought to Venice from Holland, Galileo soon constructed a spy-glass of his own which he demonstrated to the notables of the Venetian Republic, thus earning a large increase in his salary as professor of mathematics at Padua. Within a few months he had a good telescope, magnifying to 30 diameters, and was in full flood of astronomical observation.

"Through his telescope Galileo saw the moon as a spherical, solid, mountainous body very like the earth- quite different from the crystalline sphere of conventional philosophy. He saw numberless stars hidden from the naked eye in the constellations and the Milky Way. ¶ Above all, he discovered four new 'planets', the satellites of Jupiter that he called (in honor of his patrons at Florence) the Medicean stars. Thus Galileo initiated modern observational astronomy and announced himself as a Copernican. (Printing and the Mind of Man). Octavo: 18.3 x 11.8 cm. 3 parts in one volume: [16], 199, [1]; 173, [1] p., 4 leaves of plates. Collation: A-N8, O4; A-L8 (including the final blank leaf)

SECOND EDITION THUS, Fourth edition overall of Gassendi.
Wing G293; Cinti 155; Sotheran, I p. 75 (1476); cf. PMM 113 and Dibner, Heralds of Science, #7 (the 1610 edition)

A nice copy in contemporary, blind-ruled English calfskin, rebacked. The first title page is printed in red and black. Galileo's "Sidereus Nuncius" and Kepler's "Dioptrice" are introduced by separate title pages. The text is illustrated with astronomical woodcuts including images of the moon, showing its uneven, mountainous surface as discerned by Galileo through the telescope and four full-paged woodcut illustrations of stars (the Pleiades, Orion's belt, the Praesepe and Orion Nebulas.).