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Today, Feb 15th 2014 is 450 years since the birth of Galileo Galilei . By chance, last week I had the opportunity to visit the house Galileo lived in in the last years of his life near Arcetri Observatory in Florence. I was actually visiting the Observatory where I had been invited to give a seminar. Here's the explanation (in English) of the historic nature of the site.  From the roof of the observatory you can see across the valley to the Villa il Gioiello where Galileo lived from 1631-1642. It's the yellowish building just left of centre. Simone Bianchi was my host at Arcetri, and was kind enough to offer to take me over to the house. The house is not regularly open to the public, and the details of its future use are still being debated.  A famous number by the front door.  Here's an 18th century monument to Galileo from when the house was first becoming famous. A plaque above the door from the time the University of Florence bought the house. The house has been unde...

I had cause to Google "British Astronomers" yesterday, and was so horrified by the result I felt I needed to post it. Actually once I think about it it's not a surprise at all, but the raw numbers still shocked me. The top line is a list (with images) of the results "most mentioned on the web". I did a screen shot of that below. It's William Herschel, Patrick Moore, Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley, John Flamsteed, Caroline Herschel, George Airy, John Herschel, James Bradley (?), Arthur Stanley Eddington, Jeremiah Horrocks, Nevil Maskelyne, John Adams (?), Fred Hoyle, Richard van der Riet Woolley (?), Frank Watson Dyson (?), William Parsons, Martin Rees, Harold Spencer Jones (?) and Jocelyn Bell. Only two out of the 20 (10%) are alive, only two (10%) are women. I put question marks above on names which were not immediately recognisable to me (this I take as my failing not Google's, but I was curious why they're there). It turns out that most of them are ...