Harpers Photographic

When Galileo invented the telescope in 1609, he began a journey of cosmic exploration, which thousands of interested sky-gazers have embarked upon since.
His telescope was a crude refractor, giving around 20x magnification, smaller and optically far inferior to even children's telescopes of today, yet the views revealed through it were as wondrous to him as those of the Hubble Space Telescope are to us today, nearly 400 years later. Maybe even more so. In his journal, he wrote after his few nights of wonder;

"I render infinite thanks to God, for being so kind as to make me alone the first observer of marvels kept hidden in obscurity for all previous centuries."