tician" of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II de' Medici.

In those
days, a place at court was reckoned to be better than any university
chair. He visited Rome in near triumph, and was elected to the coterie
of science lovers who called themselves the Academy of the Lynxes
(. page 31).
Others, too, thought they could find new stars in the sky and win
fame like Galileo. In 1612, a book came out which described markings
or spots on the Sun. The author took them to be satellites; the Sun was
consequently a planet with moons like Jupiter, only, in view of the
Sun's importance, it had far more of them. Galileo had already observed these sun spots. In some anger he wrote a series ofletters about
them, in which he presented reasons why they must be on, or at least
very close to the Sun, not independent satellites. The book Galileo
denounced had appeared under a nom de plume; it was, in fact, by
Christoph Scheiner (1579-1650), like Clavius a German Jesuit astronomer. In him, Galileo had made a dangerous enemy.