1-158-181 - Oxford Science Archive/Heritage Images

Christopher Scheiner's illustration of his idea of the surface of the sun, 1635. German astronomer and mathematician Scheiner (1573-1650) used telescopes invented by Galileo to make over 2000 observations of the Sun, recording sunspots in the process. As a Jesuit, Scheiner held the belief that the Sun, and the heavens generally, had to be perfect, and that sunspots were shadows cast by satellites of the Sun onto its face as they passed across it. This brought him into a bitter dispute with Galileo, who was of the opinion that sunspots were features which formed on the surface of the Sun itself. Scheiner attacked Galileo in his book Rosa Ursina, before Galileo's trial before the Inquisition in 1633.