Galileo

[ gal-uh-ley-oh, -lee-oh; Italian gah-lee-le-aw ]

noun

1. Galileo Galilei, 1564–1642, Italian physicist and astronomer.
2. Aerospace. a U.S. space probe designed to take photographs and obtain other scientific information while orbiting the planet Jupiter.

Galileo

¹

/ ˌɡælɪˈleɪəʊ /

noun

1. a US spacecraft, launched 1989, that entered orbit around Jupiter in late 1995 to study the planet and its major satellites; burned up in the planet's atmosphere in 2003

Galileo

²

/ ˌɡælɪˈleɪəʊ /

noun

1. Galileo15641642MItalianSCIENCE: mathematicianSCIENCE: astronomerSCIENCE: physicist full name Galileo Galilei. 1564–1642, Italian mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. He discovered the isochronism of the pendulum and demonstrated that falling bodies of different weights descend at the same rate. He perfected the refracting telescope, which led to his discovery of Jupiter's satellites, sunspots, and craters on the Earth's moon. He was forced by the Inquisition to recant his support of the Copernican system

Galileo

1. An Italian scientist of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; his full name was Galileo Galilei. Galileo proved that objects with different masses fall at the same velocity . One of the first persons to use a telescope to examine objects in the sky, he saw the moons of Jupiter , the mountains on the moon, and sunspots .

Notes

Authorities of the Roman Catholic Church forced Galileo to renounce his belief in the model of the solar system proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus . Galileo had to assert that the Earth stands still, and the sun revolves around it. A famous legend holds that Galileo, after making this public declaration about a motionless Earth, muttered, “Nevertheless, it does move.”

Example Sentences

Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts captured the first close-up images, and then in 1995 Nasa’s Galileo spacecraft flew past Europa taking some deeply puzzling pictures.

From BBC

The Galileo probe flew past it in the 1990s, confirming scientists’ initial hopes that the moon was more than the quiet rocky ball orbiting Earth.

From Los Angeles Times

In particular, the team found patterns that match the locations and timescales of sunspots that have been have observed by astronomers since Galileo in 1612.

From Science Daily

Galileo was among the first astronomers to turn a telescope skyward and study sunspots, back in the early 1600s.

From Seattle Times

His mother fashioned a set of homemade leg braces that helped him improve enough to play football at Galileo High School.

From Los Angeles Times