Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s moons led to multiple scientific advancements

Beyond challenging Earth-centric views upon their discovery in 1610, the Galilean moons were also later analyzed to contribute to early astrometry and astronomical interferometry. Measurements of eclipses were also used to estimate the speed of light.

Scientists validated Albert Einstein's theory of gravity by measuring the apparent positions of stars via their starlight as it traveled near the sun on its way to Earth during a total solar eclipse.

Galileo's Jupiter discovery shattered Earth-centered universe beliefs

Using a telescope inspired by Dutch designs, Galileo spotted four moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610, providing undeniable evidence against geocentrism and fueled support for the heliocentric model. Galileo’s original telescope design stretched 20 meters long—a feat of optical engineering for its time.

Solar eclipses are a cosmic coincidence because the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun but about 400 times closer to Earth, allowing it to block sunlight for those on Earth within its shadow.

In the third century BCE, the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos estimated the distance to the moon using geometry after measuring the length of Earth's shadow during a lunar eclipse.

Light takes approximately eight minutes to travel from the sun's surface to Earth, but it takes thousands of years to reach the star's surface from its core—a distance more than 200 times shorter.

The first scientifically useful photograph of a total solar eclipse was taken in Königsberg, Prussia, on July 28, 1851, using a silver-coated copper plate with a light-sensitive chemical layer.

The finite speed of light means we can only perceive the world's past

When objects emit or reflect light, it takes time for the light to reach an observer and be detected. During the travel time, the object may have changed, limiting detections to describing the conditions of the object when the light was first emitted or reflected, before it was detected.

While the sun, moon, and stars rise and set from east to west due to Earth's rotation, the moon's eastward revolution around the Earth causes its shadow to move from west to east during a solar eclipse.

View historical records of solar observations and discoveries, from telescopes in the early 1600s revealing sunspots to NASA's Parker Solar Probe photographing the sun from within its outer corona in 2025.

Units involving light, such as light-seconds and light-years, describe the distances traveled by light across that amount of time.

Over thousands of years, the frequency of solar eclipses is greatest around the Arctic and Antarctic Circles and lowest near the equator.

By identifying patterns in the periodic movements of the sun, moon, and Earth, ancient civilizations realized that identical eclipses repeat about once every 6,585 days, known as the saros cycle.

The majority of exoplanets—planets outside the solar system—have been discovered through mini-eclipses created when they pass in front of their host star and block some of its light from reaching Earth.

Solar eclipses block the sun enough to enable scientists to observe its faint outer atmosphere, or corona, whose spectrum led to the discovery of helium over a decade before it was identified on Earth.

Jupiter’s size forced the creation of modified planetary formation models

Since solar winds remove gases from protoplanetary disks within millions of years of a star’s birth, models needed to provide a mechanism to jump-start Jupiter’s formation and growth. The solution involved incorporating pebbles of matter into the disk.

A breakdown of the experimental test results supporting the general theory of relativity

Besides accurately explaining the slight wobble observed in Mercury's orbit, general relativity predicted that light would bend around massive objects by an amount matching what was observed when background starlight bent around the sun during an eclipse. The theory also predicted the existence of gravitational waves and black holes decades before they were found.

Discoveries in electromagnetism, which suggested that light traveled at a single speed, became the catalyst for overturning Isaac Newton's view that all speeds are relative and could appear to change based on one's perspective.

Photons do not experience distance or the passage of time.

Even in an infinite universe, its limited age prevents a sky full of starlight

Olbers' paradox asks why the sky would ever appear dark if the universe is full of stars in all directions emitting light everywhere. Light from the farthest stars requires more time to reach our skies than the universe's age.

Earth's circumference was estimated over 2,000 years ago using geometry and shadows

By measuring the angle of the shadow cast in Syene when no shadow was cast in Alexandria, Eratosthenes used the distance between the two cities and trigonometry to estimate the Earth's circumference to within a few percentage points of the actual value.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

Some maps may incorrectly identify the boundaries of a solar eclipse's totality because they assume the Earth is a smooth surface.

View photographs of solar eclipses on Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn caused by the moons of these planets blocking sunlight.

Aristotle discovered that Earth was spherical by observing the round shadow it cast on the moon during lunar eclipses and by noting that different constellations were visible from different latitudes.

According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the first person to successfully predict a solar eclipse was the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus in 585 BCE, with the resulting celestial event ending a half-decade-long war.

According to the special theory of relativity, because the passage of time depends on how quickly objects move through space, people will not agree on the order of events they observe if they are moving at different speeds.

How the ancients calculated Earth's size correctly

Watch this seven-minute video to hear Carl Sagan explain how ancient Greek polymath Eratosthenes correctly calculated the size of the Earth in the third century BCE. At some point, Eratosthenes noticed a discrepancy in the length of shadows cast in different cities during the summer solstice. This observation grew into a simple experiment that enabled Eratosthenes, the head librarian at the Library of Alexandria, to calculate the Earth's size precisely.

Observations of colliding neutron stars by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in 2017 confirmed that gravity travels at the speed of light.

In 2025, the European Space Agency created the first artificial solar eclipse in space when one spacecraft cast a shadow onto another spacecraft to enable observations of the sun's outermost atmosphere.

According to the special theory of relativity, the faster objects move through space, the less they move through time, and therefore age more slowly.

The masses of celestial objects can be determined by analyzing their orbits, observing how they bend light, or measuring their brightness.

Simulate the precession of Mercury's perihelion—the gradual shift in the closest point of Mercury's path around the sun as its elliptical orbit rotates.

Because the half of Earth that faces the sun is larger than the area of the shadow cast by the moon during a solar eclipse, observers may experience a total, annular, or partial eclipse.

Visualizing Einstein's special relativity

Before Einstein developed his theory of general relativity, he worked out what is known as special relativity—or why time is experienced different for different observers. The breakthrough rests on his theory that light travels at a constant...

Railroads and long-distance communication led to the development of time zones, with Greenwich established as the prime meridian—the longitude of 0 degrees—due to British advancements in star mapping and navigation.

Four astronomical discoveries from ancient Greece

Modern astronomy relies on making discoveries without being present on the planets, stars, galaxies, and other objects studied. Imagine the difficulty the ancient Greeks had studying them without computers and telescopes. Yet somehow they calculated precise measurements of planetary distances, sizes, and more. Read this page to learn more about early triumphs in astronomical science.

When it formed 4.5 billion years ago, Jupiter was twice its current size

Its original size was deduced from the orbits of its moons, Amalthea and Thebe. The planet's magnetic field was also 50 times stronger than today, or 400 times stronger than Earth's.

Some research suggests Jupiter formed near Uranus’ current orbit and migrated inward

Scientists from the University of Zurich and NCCR PlanetS proposed the mechanism after using computer modeling to replicate Jupiter’s formation to match its observed concentration of heavy elements. The work may help understand how Jupiter-like exoplanets exist near host stars.