So, first day in glorious Florence and I stumbled on an exhibition devoted to the 400th anniversary of Galileo first pointing a telescope at the sky.

TOTAL heaven for an astronomy nut such as myself.

First off? Can you guess what this is? In the glass jar?

That’s right, it’s Galileo’s finger.

Seriously.

This is much less weird. The lens from one of the first two telescopes he used, given to the Medici and dropped by someone in the 17th century…

And these are his hand drawn first observations of the surface of the moon…

Mega.

There’s a virtual tour here:

http://www.galileofirenze.it/Sezione.jsp?idSezione=55