Abstract
Though the details of who was first to see the four major satellites of Jupiter are obscured by the mists of time, it seems that Simon Mayr (Marius) nearly simultaneously and independently discovered them and noted the discovery only 1 day after Galileo similarly discovered and noted it. The twin discoveries were confused by the use of different calendars by Marius and by Galileo, the former using the Julian calendar then still in use in Protestant regions and the latter using the new Gregorian calendar that was adopted in Catholic regions. Galileo was particularly sensitive to his priority, and the use of 1609 by Marius in the title of his Mundus Iovialis of 1614 raised particular ire, though adding the required 10 days for the conversion from O.S. to N.S. brought Marius’s discovery into early 1610. In the long run, we now use the names that Marius gave—Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto—to what are called the Galilean satellites.
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Notes
- 1.
Arthur Octavius Prickard ’s incomplete translation has been completed by Albert van Helden and forms the first chapter of this volume.
- 2.
Albert van Helden wrote in 1994: “It seems a hopeless task, after almost four centuries, to find out exactly when Marius first saw what turned out to be satellites of Jupiter through his telescope.”
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Pierre Leich of the Nuremberg Astronomical Society for his collaboration and for various information that he has supplied. I thank Seth Fagen for convincing me to buy my first-edition Marius (1614). Prof. Andrew Ingersoll and the Planetary Sciences Department of Caltech have provided for hospitality and visitor status. Wayne Hammond of the Chapin Library of Williams College has continually provided assistance with my collection.
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Pasachoff, J.M. (2018). Simon Marius’s Mundus Iovialis and the Discovery of the Moons of Jupiter. In: Gaab, H., Leich, P. (eds) Simon Marius and His Research. Historical & Cultural Astronomy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92621-6_5
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