Birth of a Great Observatory

[luzribeiro]

For many centuries, maps of the southern sky showed extensive blank areas -- the Terra Incognita of the heavens. The year 1595: For the first time, Dutch traders set sail to the East Indies. At night, navigators Pieter Keyser and Frederik de Houtman measured the positions of more than 130 stars in the southern sky. Soon, celestial globes and maps showed twelve new constellations, none of which had ever been seen before by any European.

See this fascinating story from ESOCast.

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