Astronomy and its instruments before and after Galileo

Abstract

Proceedings of the IAU Joint Symposium Held in Venice, San Servolo Island, Italy, 20 September-2 October 2009. This conference was planned since January 2007 as an event for the incoming International Year of Astronomy. As the title – Astronomy and its instruments before and after Galileo – synthesizes, it aimed to celebrate Galileo's astronomical discoveries delineating mankind's path towards an improved knowledge of that indivisible 'common good' that the sky represents, using monuments and buildings as well as mathematical and mechanical tools, favoring the progress of scientific astronomy in different epochs and countries. In this volume, an invisible thread brings us from the numerous Korean dolmens and 'Neolithic circular ditch systems' found in Central Europe with astronomical significance, to astronomical observatories built in Eastern countries before the invention of the telescope and post-telescope observatories of Western countries till to the Hubble Space Telescope and its recent extraordinary performance. Without forgetting the great mathematicians and astronomers of ancient Greece, from Euclid to Apollonius of Perga, from Hipparchus to Ptolemy - to quote a few of many of them - who gave basic scientific support to astronomers of learned Islam, as well as to those of European Renaissance, we can doubtless state that scientific astronomy was born since the thinking human being turned his eye towards the sky. During the meeting, a session was dedicated to the UNESCO-IAU 'Astronomy and World Heritage Initiative' which, through cooperation formalized in the Memorandum of Understanding of 30 October 2008, aims to 'the recognition, promotion, and preservation of achievements in science through the nomination of the properties whose outstanding significance derives in large part from their connection with science, in particular, astronomy.