Galileo resolves misty nebulae into stars 1610

In his stunning book A Sidereal Message (actual title is Sidereus Nuncius, normally translated incorrectly as The Starry Messenger)Galileo lists eight telescopic discoveries,anyone of whichwould have earned the Nobel Prize established some 300 years later!

Philosophers had long puzzled over structures in the universe that had the title 'nebulous stars' by the early seventeenth century. The word nebulous does not mean insterstellar matter (that use had to wait for William Herschel), but meant cloud like. Claudius Ptolemy, in the Almagest lists seven of these, which Galileo examined using a 20X power Galilean telescope.

He resolved them in numerous faint stars. In the head of Orion he found 27 stars, and in Praesepe 40 stars

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