Galileo did not afford his opponents much time to oppose or controvert with argument the discoveries made by him with the telescope before his announcement of a new one attracted public attention from those already known. He, however, exercised greater caution in disclosing the results of his observations, as other persons laid claim to having made similar discoveries prior to the time at which his were announced. He therefore adopted a method in common use among astronomers in those days, by which the letters in a sentence announcing a discovery were transposed so as to form an anagram.
Galileo announced his next discovery in this manner, and which read as follows:—
Smaismrmilme poeta leumi bvne nugttaviras.
This, when deciphered, formed the sentence:—
Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi.
I have observed that the remotest planet is triple.
Galileo perceived that Saturn presented a triform appearance, and that, instead of one body, there were three, all in a straight line, and apparently in contact with each other, the middle one being larger than the two lateral ones. In a letter to Kepler he remarked: ‘Now I have discovered a Court for Jupiter, and two servants for this old man, who aid his steps and never quit his side.’ Kepler, who excelled as an imaginative writer, replied: ‘I will not make an old man of Saturn, nor slaves of his attendant globes; but rather let this tricorporate form be Geryon—so shall Galileo be Hercules, and the telescope his club, armed with which he has conquered that distant planet, and dragged him from the remotest depths of Nature, and exposed him to the view of all.’ Continuing his observations, Galileo perceived that the two lateral objects gradually decreased in size, and at the expiration of two years entirely disappeared, leaving the central globe visible only. He was unable to assign any reason for this peculiar occurrence, which caused him much perplexity, and he expresses himself thus: ‘What is to be said concerning so strange a metamorphosis? Are the two lesser stars consumed after the manner of the solar spots? Have they vanished and suddenly fled? Has Saturn, perhaps, devoured his own children? Or were the appearances, indeed, illusion or fraud, with which the glasses have so long deceived me, as well as many others to whom I have shown them? Now, perhaps, is the time to revive the well-nigh withered hopes of those who, guided by more profound contemplations, have discovered the fallacy of the new observations, and demonstrated the utter impossibility of their existence. I do not know what to say in a case so surprising, so unlooked-for, and so novel. The shortness of the time, the unexpected nature of the event, the weakness of my understanding, and the fear of being mistaken, have greatly confounded me.’ After a certain interval those bodies reappeared; but Galileo’s glass was not sufficiently powerful to enable him to ascertain their nature nor solve the mystery, which for upwards of half a century perplexed the ablest astronomers.
The elucidation of this inexplicable phenomenon was reserved for Christian Huygens, who, with an improved telescope of his own construction, was able to declare that Saturn’s appendages were portions of a ring which surrounds the planet, and is everywhere distinct from its surface.
Galileo next directed his attention to the planet Venus, and as a result of his observations was led to communicate to the public another anagram:—
Haec immatura a me jam frustra leguntur oy.