That bright ‘star’ the other evening wasn’t a star, it was the planet Jupiter. In my telescope, I could see faint coloured bands across it; and, in an almost straight line through it, were four bright spots of light. Over the next few nights, their positions changed . . .
I’ve done what Galileo did;
Like him, I was astounded.
I looked at Jupiter’s bright moons
And saw they moved around it!
My geocentric turn of mind
Is troubled now, you see,
For hitherto the universe
Has always turned round me.
But what you see is what you get.
It looks like I was wrong:
The Earth is not the hub of things
It seemed like all along.
Poor Galileo went on trial
For what he saw that night:
The facts did not agree with what
The Church decreed was right.
Well, many things have changed; but still
We look up to the sky,
And what we see can’t help but make
Us wonder how and why . . .